Come in from the Cold: Numb3rs
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: One thousand terrorist cells. Twenty soldiers. Two government agencies. One encrypted message. Plenty of paranoia. This story is as complete as it's going to get.
1. Chapter 1

Come in from the Cold

By OughtaKnowBetter

Obligatory Disclaimer: all theirs, nothing mine, even though they're not using them during the writer's strike. "A bad actor can ruin good writing, but a good actor can't save bad writing." Let the industry remember this!

A/N: this work is two stories in one, and will appear under the same title under two fandoms: Numb3rs, and The Unit. Each story is written from a different POV, and will merge later on. No one has to read the story from the other fandom--each story is designed to be complete--but those who enjoy both fandoms will hopefully like the additional tidbits that are offered. Let's see if this works...

A/N #2: Thanks to FraidyCat and Alice I for some early work. Any errors are mine.

A/N #3: Enough already! Seriously, come on over to the forum known as "Calling All Authors". It's a safe haven from Internet bullies and flamers, where writers can work to improve their skills. I know it's helped me!

* * *

"Life, as you know it, is over," Don told the suspect with a certain glee in his voice and his knee pressed into the small of the suspect's back, snapping the cuffs around the man's wrists. "I'd start thinking of ways to say, 'I'm sorry' to the judge when it comes time to plead guilty." He stuffed his handgun back into its holster. 

This had been fun, despite the six AM start time, and, best of all, Don didn't have the reports to fill out. This was all Gary Mandelbaum's gig. Don's fellow agent had called for volunteers for an early morning raid on a suspected drug shipment, and it had paid off in more ways than one. The FBI had made a major bust, for starters, but that was just the beginning. Two: Mandelbaum was famous for supplying his troops with heavy doses of high quality caffeine prior to lift off, and three: Mandelbaum also knew this early morning bakery with these really fantastic mini-Danish that he always brought in as a way of saying thanks for volunteering…

All in all: good. Don 'assisted' his collar into the back of the truck where the suspect and all of his friends would be carted away, turning to help out where ever else he was needed.

Mandelbaum signaled to him from across the compound. "Don! Head in."

"What?" Don lifted his eyebrows. It was still early; normal FBI operations hadn't yet inhaled its own first cup of java. There shouldn't be anyone at Headquarters who even realized that Don Eppes was out of bed. "Why?"

"Got a call from the Area Director. He figured out that you were out here with me instead of snoring in your cozy little bed with Angelina Jolie. Get your butt in pronto."

_Uh-oh_. What the hell was this all about? Don never liked getting called into Area Director D'Angelo's office without warning. It usually meant trouble in some form or another. Sometimes, it was something that he'd done; sometimes, something that he hadn't done—but someone was convinced that he had. Don could go on and on in this vein but the fact remained that it still felt like he was being hauled into the principal's office for fighting on the playground with bullies who were trying to beat up on his little brother. And yes, he understood that he shouldn't fight them, he should run and get a teacher, but what were you supposed to do if the teacher wouldn't come, or you couldn't find one right away? Let Charlie get crunched?

This was getting silly. He was an adult. Charlie was an adult and well able to care for himself—although their father would beg to differ—and going to D'Angelo's office didn't mean that he was in trouble. And both Eppes boys had left high school in the distant past, so the caffeine in his belly had just better settle down and stop carving an ulcer in there.

D'Angelo's assistant waved him through which, at seven forty-five AM, Don found a trifle unsettling. Don was accustomed to having to wait in the outer office for a moment or two. The building could be burning down, and Don would still be invited to wait for a moment or two while D'Angelo fixed his tie.

Not this time. There would be no moss growing on the beige carpet in D'Angelo's outer office. The assistant again motioned for him to enter.

Don knocked gingerly on the door before sliding himself in, unwilling to disturb the door more than he had to.

"Come in, Eppes." The voice was gruff but not forbidding, a fact which cheered Don only slightly. If he were in trouble, it would have been something to the tune of "Eppes! Get your ass in here!" or "So glad you could make it, Special Agent Eppes", with a healthy dose of sarcasm. All right, so he was not currently _in_ trouble. The other option was that trouble was about to be served to him on a silver platter, with the director's compliments.

That seemed more likely, especially when Don saw waiters who would do the serving currently sitting in D'Angelo's office. There were two of them, both men, both attired in business formal, and both taking pains to seem unremarkable. There were no distinguishing marks that Don could see, just well-toned muscular bodies hiding under well-tailored clothing. No beards, and Don couldn't even tell if that was a mustache on the sandy-haired man's face or just a shadow from the east-facing window in the office. If the pair was committing a crime in front of him at this exact moment, Don still would have had difficulty rendering an adequate description for an APB.

Though he didn't recognize the men, he still could recognize the type: spooks. Undercover personnel. _Upper-class_ undercover personnel, the sort that went overseas and came home with information designed to save the planet from immediate immolation, or at least a significant portion of the industrial Western hemisphere.

Whatever. Bottom line: they meant that trouble had come to roost on Don's lap.

D'Angelo gestured. "Take a seat, Eppes. Gentlemen, Special Agent Don Eppes. Eppes, Randolph Abrams and John Ericks, of the National Security Agency."

"Pleasure." Don did the obligatory hand-shaking routine. "What brings you both to L.A.?"

Abrams was the one elected to speak. "We're here to request the cooperation of the FBI, Agent Eppes."

"You already have it." Don knew his lines as well as anyone. Cooperation between agencies was always verbalized. Actual receipt of same wasn't necessarily a given, but all agencies pretended that they were just overjoyed to work with each other and then meet downtown for drinks when the day was over.

"Good." Abrams also knew his part, only he was about to advance the plot. Don listened closely.

"We suspect a leak in our organization," was the opening gambit.

Aha. It became clear. Don supplied the next line of the script. "And you'd like our assistance in rooting them out."

Oops: plot hole. Abrams did not deliver the line that Don was anticipating. "No thank you, Agent Eppes. We have that covered." Abrams inclined his head with a gratitude that he didn't mean. "We do, however, have a mission with which we would like FBI assistance."

"Okay," Don drawled. Naturally it would be okay, and of course he would be taking this assignment. He wouldn't have been called into D'Angelo's office if that weren't a given. Don's acquiescence was a mere formality.

It didn't mean, however, that the NSA could waltz in here and get whatever it wanted. D'Angelo would be counting on Don to make things a mite difficult for their fellow government workers, just so that the NSA would remember this 'favor' in the future when the FBI needed something. Don planned to oblige, but first he needed more information. "What kind of mission?"

The pair exchanged glances. Studied glances, well-rehearsed. Don wasn't fooled one iota.

"We have a critical piece of information, Agent Eppes," Abrams said.

_If it wasn't critical, you wouldn't be here. You'd be back home in Washington, sipping brandy in front of a fireplace_. _Spit it out, buddy_.

Abrams had either flunked his mandatory telepathy course or he was ignoring the thoughts directed at him.

"The content of this information is unimportant to the mission in which we are asking you to participate," he said, leaning back in the chair.

"Take charge of."

"Beg pardon?" Abrams looked startled at D'Angelo's words.

D'Angelo shuffled some papers on his desk to make the NSA agent wait. "Take charge of," he repeated. "That was what we discussed prior to Special Agent Eppes' arrival, Mr. Abrams. The FBI 'participates' in _joint_ operations. That is not what is being considered here. Any NSA agents on the scene will not have overall command; it is an FBI operation. Therefore, the FBI, in the person of Special Agent Eppes, will be assuming responsibility for the success of this assignment."

_Wonderful. Whose side are you on, D'Angelo? I could get my butt kicked here_.

Abrams sighed. "Agreed. Your man is in charge."

"Thank you." Don tried not to let the sarcasm show. "Now, what is this critical piece of information?"

That, it turned out, was the problem: the NSA didn't know. It was encrypted. Again, that shouldn't have been a problem, since the NSA was justifiably well-known for its ability to handle almost any code known to man, but apparently this one was created by alien-hybrids reared on Saturn, because the NSA was coming up blank. All they knew was that it was important.

No, it wasn't really created by half-alien man-bots, it just seemed that way. The real problem was that the critical information had arrived in a coded fashion, and the man responsible for de-coding the thing had had the misfortune to step in front of a bus before he could brief his back-up.

Was it an accident?

Probably, but the NSA was made up of paranoid types. They were still exploring the matter and would for the next several weeks if not years. Anyway, that wasn't what they wanted the patsies at the FBI—uh, their _colleagues_ at the FBI—to do. The decoding part they had under control—sort of.

What was the FBI supposed to do?

The NSA had someone in mind who they were pretty sure could decipher the information. They'd used him before and found him to be reliable. They hadn't spoken to him yet, but they were certain that the man would drop everything to come running to the aid of his country. The man was a patriot in the finest sense of the word.

Right. What was the FBI supposed to do?

Once this man decoded the critical information, the NSA could take over and make best use of it. Given this level of code complexity, it was certain that the information contained something a little more important than figuring out which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Once again, slowly, for those of us in the room who don't seem to be understanding The Big Picture: what the hell was the FBI supposed to do?

Didn't we mention that?

Would we be bringing it up if we had?

There's no need to be sarcastic, Agent Eppes.

And there's no need to be obtuse, Mr. Abrams. What is the FBI's role here?

"I'd be interested in that myself, Mr. Abrams," Director D'Angelo murmured, as much to defuse the tension as to find out the answer.

Abrams stifled a sigh. "We'd like the FBI to handle security," he muttered.

"What was that, Mr. Abrams?"

"Security." Abrams cleared his throat, and his face flushed. "We want the FBI to handle the security while this man decodes the message."

_There. Now that wasn't so hard, was it, Abrams?_

_Hell, yes, it was, Eppes. I just about choked. You think I like admitting that we need help from a bunch of locals one step up from flatfoots?_

"We have an appropriate venue for our consultant," Abrams said, hurrying on, now eager to get the tough part over and done with. "The location is secure, with high end technology that we anticipate the consultant will require in order to decode the message. Mr. Ericks and I will deliver the consultant to the facility, and you will ensure that he is able to work without distraction."

"Those distractions being—?"

"There shouldn't be any," Ericks said, finally getting into the spirit of the mission. "We're keeping this quiet; we're not letting out anything in particular."

"But—?" Don heard the unspoken word in the sentence, and voiced it before Ericks could escape.

"As Abrams said, we've got a leak. We don't know where it is, and we're working to contain it. But, realistically, we need that critical information now. We can't afford to take our time with this."

Don nodded. It made sense. The NSA couldn't guarantee protection for their consultant, so it went to an agency that it thought could. And upon which, incidentally, if the assignment went bad, they could place blame. Oh, yeah, they had some smart cookies in Washington.

Okay, a certain Special Agent Don Eppes that he was fond of had better be smarter than the opposite side. Both of the opposite sides.

* * *

Three o'clock was never a good time in the afternoon, Professor Charles Eppes had realized long ago. It was the time when people went wandering in search of something, in search of anything that took their fancy at the moment. Some searched in libraries, some searched at the local Starbucks. Others went searching for their professors who, having completed the day's assigned lectures to students with varying degrees of comprehension, were now engaged in either a) preparing the next round of verbiage, b) catching up on scholarly journals in order to keep their place in the Greater Scheme of Things or c) hoping that the afore-mentioned students wouldn't realize that the professor had foolishly admitted to having office hours at three o'clock. For some professors, an unearned nap was so much more pleasurable. 

Charlie Eppes was engaged in none of those things. This semester's workload was a repeat course for him and his lecture had been prepared last year, only requiring a bit of dusting off to make it ready for Monday. He had already demolished the latest journal, mostly because one Dr. Marshall Penfield had had the foolishness to allow a brief to be published without triple-checking the source that his graduate student had used. That source was Dr. Eppes, and the graduate student had mis-quoted the source, and Charlie was more than happy to point out the oversight in a pithily worded missive to the editor of said journal. (Hah! Take that, Penfield!)

Which left office hours. Professor Eppes was delighted that no student had yet arrived to darken his door because there was a test due to be handed back on the afore-mentioned Monday, and his share of grading those exams still needed to be accomplished. His two grad students had already done the lion's share of the work, but Prof. Eppes had been taught to always participate in these details. It made for better camaraderie among scholars, and besides: who knew when one of those grad students would graduate and end up on a scholarly review board for a journal that you wanted to be published in? Dr. Eppes did his share of the grading.

Then it came: the knock. The dreaded knock on the door. Half-timid, half-demanding, the sound would be followed by a shaggy head—didn't math students ever come in short hair?—that would poke a pimply nose in to ask if Professor Eppes had the time to discuss how he had come up with two plus two equals eight plus negative four.

Except that it wasn't. Now that the sound had had time to impinge on his consciousness, Charlie realized that the knock had avoided the half-timid part and gone straight to demanding. And the head that poked itself past the door jam was well-trimmed and followed by a smoothly muscled body in a suit and tie. The body was followed by a second body in another suit, tie not optional.

Not students.

Charlie didn't recognize these particular men, but he did recognize the type. He had seen them, had worked with them, in another time and another place. These were men who worked behind the scenes, men who accomplished things so that politicians could get up on a podium and pontificate about how the world was/is/would be a better place.

These were men who wanted something.

Since that something frequently involved some really fun math as well as another opportunity to give his accountant heart failure when it came time for tax season, Charlie was more than ready to listen. The grading of tests could wait. They would have to get done before eleven AM Monday morning, but they could wait for an hour or so. Charlie put on a professional smile, one that said 'mild interest' with 'I suppose I can fit you into my busy schedule.' "Gentlemen. What can I do for you?" _Let's play it cool, Charlie. Remember, you promised to take Amita to that upscale Italian place Saturday night. Don't blow it by accepting something that will tie you up._

"Dr. Eppes?" Another formality. This pair had already studied his photo, knew exactly who he was, which made it a little easier to identify who they were. They were most likely from a former employer, or at least one of the employer's various departments; the same former employer who collected those taxes on a regular basis. _Uncle Sam giveth, and Uncle Sam taketh away_.

And they knew that the identification ritual was only a preliminary gambit, the opening remarks that would become progressively more interesting to their subject. Or so they hoped.

"Randolph Abrams," one introduced himself, extending a hand to be shaken. "John Ericks." That meant nothing to Charlie. "NSA." _That_ did. The National Security Agency was one of those departments of the government for whom Charlie had done work over the years. Apparently they wanted him to do a little more work now. Charlie could put two and two together to come up with a hefty consulting fee, not to mention a neat little problem. Charlie squashed a grin. This could be a fun way to spend a portion of his weekend.

Charlie leaned back in his chair. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" _And what, by extension, does my government want me to do?_

"We have this piece of critical information, Dr. Eppes," Abrams announced.

"In code?" _Of course it is. Why else would you be here?_

"Yes," Abrams admitted, sticking to the script. "The man responsible for decoding it was killed in a recent accident. He hadn't had time to plan for back up. It was unexpected."

"That's why it's called an accident." Charlie still felt bad. Accidents happened. He wondered if it was someone that he knew; it could have been. There weren't all that many top level cryptographers, and Charlie knew a lot of them by name and work styles if not by face. But chances were pretty good that even if he asked for the name of the cryptographer, they wouldn't tell him, or they would feed him a fake name just to keep the conversation intact. "You need me to decipher it?"

"As soon as possible," Abrams said. "We suspect that this may have strategic importance."

"Didn't think you wanted me to decode a grocery list." Charlie too could be dry. He'd been practicing.

Abrams threw a half smile onto his jaw, pretending to appreciate Charlie's wit. "The usual rates, I presume."

"Unless you care to offer better." Charlie leaned forward, extended his hand. "If you give me the message, I'll be able to give you a rough estimate of how long it will take me."

Not a muscle twitched on either Abrams' or Ericks' face. "You misunderstand, Dr. Eppes. We will need you to come with us to decode it."

_Uh-oh. Can't miss Saturday night. Might as well kiss my relationship with Amita good bye if that happens_. "Gentlemen, I have a pressing engagement this week end that I cannot afford to neglect." _Somehow I think that if I try to tell you that I'm choosing a girl over Uncle Sam, you're not going to be particularly understanding._ Charlie hurried on. "And, forgive me, but I have already decoded so-called 'critical information' in the past that did indeed turn out to be someone's grocery list; an excellent hummus recipe, if I recall correctly. If you'd like to wait while I work here in my office you're more than welcome, but I'm afraid I must draw the line at traveling any great distance."

Abrams frowned. "Dr. Eppes, you misunderstand," he repeated. "This is information of critical importance, not your mother's laundry list."

"My mother passed away a few years ago, Mr. Abrams." Coldly.

Down for the count. Abrams realized that he'd made a fatal error while trying to enlist Dr. Eppes' assistance. Ericks took over, glossed over the faux pas. _There's a reason that these guys travel in pairs._ "Dr. Eppes, time is of the essence on this matter. This is a potential terrorist plot waiting to happen, and you are the only person that we can turn to."

"In which case, you can turn right here," Charlie said firmly. "As I said, I have no objection to your looking over my shoulder, but I will be working either in my office or in my home. That's my final offer, gentlemen; take it or leave it." He folded his arms, knowing that he had them over a barrel.

He was right. The pair made their decision through carefully noncommittal glances at each other, followed by a slight nod.

"Very well, Dr. Eppes," Abrams acquiesced. He looked at his watch. "We'll return in one hour, with the document. You will be in your office?"

"I will be here," Charlie agreed. _And office hours will be over until Monday_.


	2. Cold 2 Numb3rs

"A vacation," David repeated, trying to make it seem reasonable to himself. "A vacation where I wear a gun twenty four/seven."

Don grinned, snapped the gum in his mouth. "Clean, fresh mountain air. Breakfast, lunch and dinner served by a resort in the area, hauled in three times a day with a bunch of late night snacks sitting in the fridge. Those NSA guys tell me that the food there is outstanding and, even if they're lying through their teeth, we still don't have to cook it. There's maid service, and they pipe in two hundred and fifty four channels on a screen the size of a movie theater. What's not to love?"

"Tell me: do we have a choice?"

"No."

"_That's_ what's not to love, Don. I had _plans_ for this week end, man." David was still dismayed. "Sexy, foxy plans, guy, with a very smooth lady."

"I can make it right, David."

"How? Can I bring this lady to this pseudo-resort type place that you're hauling us away to? Can I take her out dancing at the local club?"

"Well, no, I can't do that," Don acknowledged, "but I can budget in about two dozen roses, a singing telegram, and a weekend in Cabo at the NSA's expense to be taken on another weekend. Man, those guys are desperate!"

"You can do that?" David's spirits perked up.

"Like I said: they're desperate." He looked around at the rest of his team. "Anybody else want to put in for goodies, before the ink is dry on the email? The NSA really needs us for security, somebody that they can trust to protect this consultant they're getting in. So, bottom line, we get to baby-sit for a week end, watch the football team of your choice get their butt kicked on wide screen TV while eating food that costs a fortune, and then get compensatory time off 'cause technically this is overtime for all of us. How sweet is that?"

"Where is this place?" Colby was already convinced, just curious.

Don shrugged. "Somewhere up north, is all I was told. They're going to chopper us in. There's a landing pad on site, so that won't be a problem. It's an old research facility from Cold War days, they said. Lots of concrete with a really lousy interior decorator, but it's secure. A mouse couldn't get in there without security clearance. The beds are comfortable, or so they claim."

Megan looked suspicious. "I don't know, Don. Something about this is giving me a funny feeling. That they're not telling us everything. The NSA guys, I mean."

"That's a given," Don snorted. "When have they ever come clean with us? Completely, I mean, without us holding some sort of gun to their heads?" He leaned back in his chair, snapped his gum again. "I agree, there's a cloud somewhere in this silver lining. The NSA honchos wouldn't go to all this trouble just to protect one little consultant. They'd fly him or her into D.C., hustle his or her butt into a concrete bunker—guys, the Pentagon is right there—and sit on him or her until the job is done. That's not happening. Why not? That's a rhetorical question, Colby," he added before Colby could open his mouth. Then Don frowned. "You're right, Megan. I don't like it. This is too easy. They're even giving us a squad of the Army's finest to man the perimeter while we're there."

"Which means that we now have three different departments cooperating on this thing," Megan pointed out. "The FBI, the NSA, and the Army. That's an awful lot of cooperation for one short week end."

"Which means that someone is very nervous," David guessed. "The consultant? Or someone else?"

"My guess is on someone else," Don decided. He came to another rapid decision. "Which is why Megan gets to work from home."

"Me? Not that I'm objecting, mind you. I too have plans, David."

"Really? Someone I know? Need me to do the big brother act?"

Don pulled them back to the mission. "They gave me this as a preliminary." He spread out a blueprint of their new weekend retreat on the table. The papers looked crisp and new, as though someone had gone to a lot of recent trouble to update the place and the plans. "This thing was built into a mountain. Originally it was an old mine, back in the 1800's. Silver, maybe, but it played out decades ago. The Department of Defense acquired it and built a bunker into it during the Cold War, and a few years ago renovated it for some exercise or other."

"Only two entrances," Colby noted. "Here, and here." He tapped at them on the map. "And if I'm reading this correctly, those entrances have six inch thick doors. Two sets each."

"Right. External security; that's the Army's part. We're internal." Don pointed at a large room. "This is where the consultant gets to work. Heavy duty computers, electronic links to whatever he/she/it needs, power. All the rest of this stuff are extra rooms that nobody needs at the moment, sleeping quarters, and mess hall type stuff." He pointed at Megan. "Which is why I want you on the outside, Megan. This place should be a cakewalk to guard, and we aren't even providing the shock troops. A couple of kids with pea-shooters could defend these two doors, and nothing short of a nuclear explosion is going to take down the mountain that this place is built into."

"Which means that the NSA is worried about someone sneaking inside and taking out the consultant," Colby thought. "Who is the consultant? We know him? Or her? Charlie used to consult for them, before he saw the light and came to the FBI."

"Or the NSA is worried about someone grabbing the information once it's decoded," David put in.

"Any and/or all of the above," Don agreed. "Which means that I want an outside source—outside this bunker, I mean—an outside source that I can trust implicitly. Which means you, Reeves."

"Gee, Don, thanks. I always knew my loyalty would be rewarded some day." Megan grinned. "Have fun, gentlemen."

Don folded up the blueprints. "Okay, guys, pack a bag. We leave in three hours."

* * *

Abrams and Ericks were prompt. Within the hour they had returned, bearing a small data stick. Abrams handed it to Charlie with due ceremony. 

"We will remain here while you work," he announced formally. "This data stick contains a copy of the information to be decoded. This is highly sensitive information, Dr. Eppes," he reminded Charlie. Ericks took up a position at the door, hand inside his jacket, presumably on the handle of his weapon, peering out into the hallway.

"I'm aware of that." Charlie had already started ignoring the man. What was about to pop up on his computer was far more interesting than anything then the NSA agent had to say.

"You'll need the security protocols to access the data—"

"Already got 'em," Charlie mumbled, his attention on the screen.

"You do?" Abrams looked up, startled. The world had been rocked. The hard exterior cracked. This was not according to plan.

"What, you thought that I wouldn't check you out?"

"Dr. Eppes, neither of us appear in any national database—"

"Didn't use 'em. Called up a couple of contacts. Made sure that you were who you said you were."

"Contacts, Dr. Eppes? If this operation has been compromised—"

"It hasn't, Mr. Abrams. Can you move, please? You're in my light." Charlie jotted some meaningful chicken scratches onto the notepad beside him.

"Who did you call, Dr. Eppes? I must insist on knowing."

Charlie sighed. "Rob."

"Rob?"

Now Charlie did look up, annoyed because his train of thought had been interrupted. "You know. _Rob_. Who reports to _John_. Who reports to _Keith_. Who reports to the _Presi_—"

Abrams looked a little sick. "Oh."

"How did you think I got these protocols, Mr. Abrams? I'm sure that I could have broken in without them, but since you said that time was of the essence…" he trailed off, pulling information onto the screen. "Hah."

"Dr. Eppes—"

"Be quiet."

Abrams got quiet. Ericks, at the door, didn't open his mouth.

Minutes passed. Abrams looked at his watch.

"You might as well sit down, Mr. Abrams."

Abrams sat. And looked at his watch.

"This isn't going to be a simple one hour assignment, Mr. Abrams." Charlie sat back in his chair, finally distracted by the man staring at him. "If this is half as complex as you stated, I'll be working on it for most of the week end, and possibly more. Go find something to do. Don't keep looking at me."

Abrams shrugged, but he got up from his chair and wandered to the window in Charlie's office, standing carefully to one side in a practiced move. He probably didn't know any other way to approach a window, Charlie thought idly, turning his thoughts back to the computer screen. Charlie had seen Don do the same thing. Habit, ingrained suspicion; simple paranoia. To federal agents of any stripe, caution was built in.

That caution didn't seem like such a bad thing in the next few minutes.

Ericks pulled his face back in from the door. "Class let out around now?"

"What time is it?" Charlie didn't move from the computer.

"Three thirty-six."

"Could be. Lanahan tends to go over."

"And what percentage of the student body is non-Caucasian, Dr. Eppes?" Ericks had a hint of nerves showing.

"That's profiling, Mr. Ericks. We have students from all over the world—"

_Crack!_

The window shattered.

Charlie had only a split second to register that a bullet had buried itself in the fake wood of his desk before Abrams flung himself over the math consultant, taking him to the floor and relative safety. _Average speed of a bullet fired from a high velocity rifle is 1200 meters/second, which, allowing for slowing through the glass that was formerly my window, says that they'll find the slug somewhere between my pencil drawer and the drawer containing the second level diff EQ test results from last semester_. The laptop he was working on clattered to the floor next to them, Abrams shoving Charlie behind the desk.

"Down!"

The word was unnecessary. Charlie was already on the floor, hands over his head, hoping that no more bullets were flying past.

He would be right. Bullets were now a thing of the past. Hand to hand combat moved in, in the form of three swarthy complexioned individuals who seemed intent on a) grabbing the data stick that Charlie had been working from and taking Charlie's computer with it and b) removing Charlie from the protection provided by the NSA in the persons of Abrams and Ericks. Neither point was in Charlie's best interest.

Charlie's opinion of both Abrams and Ericks took a sharp upswing. Both men fought back, using every trick in a book that Charlie had never read to subdue their opponents.

They were outnumbered three to two. Charlie tried to grab his laptop, got his hand stomped on for his trouble. He scrambled back.

"Get him out of here!" Ericks yelled, shoving the heel of his hand at a deserving nose.

Charlie didn't know how they did it, but Abrams did. The next thing he knew, he was out of his office, the noise trailing after them, Abrams hustling him down the stairs toward the outside dusk and safety.

"Ericks is—" Charlie tried to turn around.

"Leave him!" Abrams ordered. He pushed Charlie into a black sedan. "Get in and stay down. Move!"

Charlie moved.

"I was afraid that something like this would happen," Abrams snarled under his breath. He shoved down on the gas pedal. The sedan roared off into the dusk.


	3. Cold 3 Numb3rs

"I haven't jumped a chute in like, four years." Colby fingered the heavy canvas packs longingly. The chopper that they were riding in smelled of machine oil and dirt. The three suitcases that the men had brought with them looked out of place in the Army vehicle, trim black bags that clashed with the camouflage décor. Don could see the thoughts running through David's mind: _any machine oil on this seatbelt and transferring itself to my leather jacket?_ Don fought down a grin; Sinclair was remembering his days overseas just as much as Colby.

"And you're not about to jump one now," Don told him. Don himself hadn't decided whether to be annoyed at the lack of amenities or to delight in the sense of 'roughing it'. "There's a landing pad outside of where we're going."

"Which we still don't know where it's at," David added. David _had_ decided; had decided to be annoyed at the lack of knowledge and, as he saw it, lack of cooperation from the NSA.

Communication was difficult over the roar of the blades whirring above them. Don gave up, settled for watching the landscape fly by. It was mostly trees and mountains, the chopper sliding through those peaks with ease. An occasional highway cut the trees with a precise line but they were too high up for Don to even guess at which particular highway it was. Trucks, looking like miniatures, puffed along, flanked by dark SUV-looking cars. It looked like some kid's train set-up—yeah, there was a train running along through more trees, with around thirty or so cars being tugged by a couple of engines.

If scanty, the information from the NSA had still been accurate. They were flying almost directly north, maybe just a hint east, which made sense with L.A. on the west coast. Just about any place they would end up would be east of L.A. _Like having your back to the wall_, Don thought to himself. _Cuts down on the ways that they can come at you_.

He wondered who the 'consultant' would be. Charlie? Always a possibility, although why the NSA agents wouldn't just come out and name him puzzled Don . They certainly knew about the family relationship. In the long run, it didn't matter; Don and his people would do the same thorough job no matter who it was. _Gee, I wonder if it might be that Penfield guy. I almost hope that it is. I will really enjoy needling Charlie if it is_.

Probably not Charlie. Charlie had let slip that he had a massive date with Amita, and, considering how his kid brother's relationship was going—or not going, as their father would grump over—Don knew that Charlie would not be eager to take on a project that took him away for the week end. _At least one of us is trying_. Don turned away from that thought. _Neither one of us is very good at this relationship stuff, but at least one of us is trying_. Maybe that would do for the time being. _Charlie can do the trying for both of us_.

It was dusk when the chopper lit on the landing pad. A jeep driven by a couple of men in fatigues met them.

"Lt. Joe Bakker," the senior officer greeted them, senior only by rank. Don judged the man to be no more than twenty three. Young, but serious.

Don shook his hand. "Don Eppes, FBI. Everything all set on your end?"

"Yessir, Agent Eppes," the man drawled. Georgia, maybe? Arkansas? Don wondered, decided it didn't matter. He'd be getting names of all of Bakker's men, and having Megan run them through some databases just as fast as he could get to a communications console. Bakker continued, "figger y'all have the tough part. Me and my guys, we get to stand around and watch the rest of you run around like chicks with yer heads cut off."

Don grinned, liking the man on the spot. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut, and Don's gut was telling him that this youngster was a 'good un'. "Don't plan on doing much running, lieutenant. Plan on planting my butt in front of that high end TV screen and watch the Dolphins get soaked."

Corner of the mouth edged up. "What makes you b'lieve that the Dolphins aren't about to serve toasted Ram sandwiches to everybody, Agent Eppes?"

"'Cause I saw 'em play last week, Lieutenant Bakker."

Bakker too pasted a thoughtful grin on his face. "Care to put a little wager on that game, Special Agent Eppes?"

"Love to, Lieutenant Bakker."

* * *

Charlie's hands were still shaking. 

No, not accurate; at least, not complete. Charlie's hands were still shaking, and his knees were knocking, and his teeth were chattering despite the temperature being well into the seventies as he waited on the black tarmac for the chopper to set down in the darkening night air. Waiting for the chopper that would whisk him away to whatever safe place that the NSA had arranged. The noise in the air told him that it would be soon.

Abrams rejoined him, handed him something steaming hot in a white disposable cup. "You okay?"

Charlie sternly commanded his hands to slow down enough to get the cup to his lips without spilling any. "Your friend. The other man, Mr. Ericks. Have you heard from him?" The picture was still vivid in his mind's eye: Ericks preventing the three assailants from following Charlie and Abrams. Ericks going down under a flurry of fists. How much blood was there? Charlie couldn't remember. That part of the scene remained frustratingly blank.

Abrams looked away. "Last word I got, he was on his way to the emergency room. Your university security types got there about ten minutes after we left."

"Is he—?"

"Alive? Last I heard." Abrams gestured to the chopper that was gingerly feeling its way onto solid ground. "You ready? You can do this?" More pointedly: "You see why we wanted you in a safe place?"

"Yes, to all three." Charlie took another swallow of the bitter coffee. It tasted of machine oil. "You'll let my brother know? He'll make sure that my father and Dr. Ramajuan are aware that I'll be away." _That I wasn't in some sort of car accident, waiting for them to come claim the body_.

"We'll take care of notifying your family, Dr. Eppes," Abrams assured him calmly. "You've made a wise decision, choosing to come with us. Those people won't stop until they've killed you. That's what we were afraid of, earlier, back in your office. And you can see that we were right."

Charlie nodded, scanning the horizon, checking that there were no speeding car containing terrorists trying to finish off the job that they had started back in his office. "My laptop," he muttered forlornly.

"It should be arriving any moment, Dr. Eppes," Abrams told him. "It was still at the crime scene. One of my people went back for it. And here he comes now," Abrams said, flagging down a dark sedan.

The sedan drove straight onto the tarmac. The window rolled down, and someone handed out the laptop. Charlie recognized it immediately, recognized the scratches that it had acquired over time from all the various demonstrations that he had done for his classes.

The window rolled back up with a smooth electronic whir, and Abrams handed the machine over to its owner. He took Charlie by the arm. "The chopper is waiting, Dr. Eppes. You'll be safe once we get you to the facility."

"Wait!" Charlie remembered something, and pulled away, examining the laptop. "The data stick! The one with the document on it! It's not here!"

"We have copies," Abrams told him calmly. "One will be waiting for you at the facility. The documents are useless without you, Dr. Eppes. No one can decipher them except you. That's the point." He guided Charlie toward the waiting helicopter. "Go. Everything will still be here when you return. Go, and serve your country."

Charlie nodded, and climbed into the back of the cockpit. The pilot handed him a pair of mufflers to dampen the sound of the rotors. A moment later the chopper was hauling its valuable human cargo northward, the clouds almost parting before it.

Abrams walked toward the black sedan that was waiting to pick him up. He slid into the front passenger's seat. "It's okay. He's gone."

"Finally." The driver pulled off the dark mustache that over-shadowed his lip, leaving a clean-shaven profile behind. The hat came off, revealing sandy brown hair. "I thought he'd never go."

"Yeah, well…" Abrams let the comment trail away. He turned to the pair of swarthy men in the back seat of the vehicle. "Thanks, guys. I owe you one. You make great Middle Eastern terrorists after a gullible math professor."

One of them winked back. "Yeah, well next time you'd better make sure that Ericks there behind the wheel pulls his punches a little better. I got a date tomorrow with a very elegant lady who is not gonna be thrilled by her escort sporting a black eye."


	4. Cold 4 Numb3rs

"Seriously, Don. I could see them filming the next James Bond flick here." Colby was still awe-struck by all the heavy concrete, not to mention the silvery machines that overflowed the main work room. "I haven't a clue what half this stuff does. You?"

Don shook his head. It was all a symphony of blinking lights to him. There was a bank of controls here, a panel of switches there, and several dials interspersed among the whole lot of them, all numbered without any hint of what those numbers referred to. As he looked over the room, he felt extraordinarily out of his element.

"Here. I think this is the communication panel." David bravely touched some of the dials and pulled his hand back nervously when it beeped at him. "Hah. This one controls the radio frequencies. It _is_ the communication panel. We can talk to the outside world without stepping outside to use cell phones."

"Which probably wouldn't work in these mountains anyway," Don muttered. "Anybody got any idea what state we're in?"

"Northern California?"

"I vote for Idaho. On the Canadian border. Kinda looks like where I grew up. Sorta."

"Do I hear anyone shooting for North Dakota? No?" Don shrugged. "Let's just call it the Canadian border, and be done with it. The pine trees look cold enough to qualify. Anyone think that the soldiers types know?"

"Probably," Colby told him cheerfully. "Want me to ask?"

"Go for it. Anyway, let's move in," Don ordered. "David, get on the radio thing and call Megan. Give her a list of our soldier types; I want to know if any of 'em have any sort of a record, or have been out of the country recently, especially around the Middle East."

"Don, hate to break it to you," Colby said, "but there's a war going on in Iraq, not to mention a little dust up in Afghanistan. These boys are soldiers. It's a pretty good chance that they've been overseas."

"Still, I want to know, Colby." They were there to protect a valuable consultant, and knowing what they were up against was important. "They're all probably innocent, but overseas is where someone has a better chance of getting to them. Make the call, David."

"Will do. When is the consultant due in?"

Don checked his watch. "In another hour. Get moving, David. I'd like an answer before the consultant gets here, if at all possible."

"Pushing it, Don." David got on the radio, connecting with Megan and passing along the information. "She'll get back to us within the hour with what she has."

"Good enough." It had to be. They weren't going to get any more than that. "Let's go exploring before our consultant arrives."

* * *

They heard the sound of the chopper before they saw it. The dark sky covered the sight, but the noise preceded it all. Moments later all three saw bright lights dancing in the sky, lights which grew larger and brighter until they resolved into the expected chopper.

Two people disembarked, one slight and shivering, the other overlarge. They both walked toward the FBI team, the large man carrying a small case. There was something familiar about the slender one, Don thought, watching as they approached. He looked like—

"Hey, Charlie," Colby greeted the smaller man. He turned to David. "Pay up, dude."

Charlie, however, was stunned. "Don? What are you doing here?"

Don's own private suspicions had now been justified. "Waiting for you, buddy. I was wondering when you would get here." He turned his attention to Charlie's companion. "Don Eppes, FBI. You are?"

"Steven Foster, and no jokes about the name, thank you," the larger man smiled, shaking Don's hand with one of those shakes that told him that crushing fingers was not beyond the realm of possibility but would be delayed for the moment until needed. "I'm your NSA liaison. I take it you've been moving in just fine?"

"Aside from being overwhelmed by the technology, yes," Don told him. "The army boys took one look and said we could have it. We told them that we didn't want it, either."

"Yes, well, it is a little bit state-of-the-art," Foster smiled. He turned to Charlie. "Let's get you inside, professor, and you can tell us what you need to start work."

"Yes." Charlie looked around himself, lost.

Don frowned. His brother seemed, well, _shell-shocked_ was the best way to put it. Maybe distracted, and not in the usual _Charlie's got a puzzle_ way of being distracted. "Chuck?"

"Inside." Charlie's feet started moving of their own volition toward the opening in the mountain, the silvery doors sending off diminutive sparks of reflective light from the chopper. He paused to look around the landing pad, stared off into the distance, then looked around himself once more.

Don exchanged a worried look with his fellow FBI agents and moved to catch up. "Buddy?"

Charlie stared at his brother, the fear wide in his eyes. "Don, this is big stuff."

"They don't call you in for the little stuff, Chuck," Don told him gently.

"No, Don, you don't understand. I think I almost got someone killed." Charlie now seemed ready to stop in his tracks altogether. Don propelled him forward, toward the door, keeping him talking, keeping an eye out for anything around that might turn into something hazardous to their health. _Got someone killed? What happened to you, Charlie? I knew that this was important. _He glanced around_. Right now, it's more important to get you into the protection of this mountain retreat, Charlie_.

Charlie swallowed hard. "Don, I wanted to stay home, work on it there. In my office, I mean. Work on it in my office. They came after me, these terrorist types. At CalSci. They came to my office. Don, they were ready to kill me, I think." More realization sank in. Damn, was Don's brother rambling incoherently? Don watched Charlie try to get himself under control. It was a supreme effort. "Don, if I had stayed home, would they have gone after Dad? After Amita, maybe Larry? You?" He started trembling again, cursed it, couldn't seem to stop.

"Charlie, are you okay?" Don asked concernedly. "Buddy, you're shaking like a leaf." He took his brother by the arm, moving him past the pair of soldiers on duty by the main slab of metal that passed for a door, listening to the thing clunk shut behind them all. It sounded solid and comforting; nothing could get past. He tossed a glance over his shoulder. "David, get Charlie something hot, will you? We'll be in the conference room."

"Which one is the conference room?" David went, disappearing down one of the many steel corridors in search of sustenance.

The conference room had many comfortable chairs, which was the reason that Don had selected it. He pushed Charlie inside, not taking no for an answer, not objecting when Foster trailed in after them and settled himself in one of the chairs off to the side. But Foster wasn't Don's goal in this matter; Charlie was. He eased his brother into one of the chairs, setting himself up next to him, leaning forward resting his elbows on his knees. "Tell me what happened."

There wasn't much, but Charlie managed to spin it out into fifteen minutes worth of talk. Even David coming in with a hot mug of coffee—Charlie made a face, but sipped at it anyway—didn't slow down the nervous chatter.

Charlie's eyes were large and haunted. "Can you check on that NSA agent, the one who got hurt, Don? He was injured saving me. It happened because I was foolish, didn't think that they knew what they were talking about. And Dad, and Amita; you can get word to them?"

"I can do that," Don told him. "I'll have Megan send someone over. In fact, I may get them some protection." _Yeah, I like that idea. This thing is sounding more and more scary, and this is Eppes talking, not some over-fed NSA dude with delusions of authority_.

"Don, I need to get to work." Charlie looked around, seeing as if for the first time where he was. "The faster I crack this code, the sooner this will all be over." _And Dad and Amita and everyone else safe_, hung silently in the air. Don could practically see the thought in neon lights over Charlie's head. Charlie looked around again, still not quite comprehending where he was. "I need the document."

"Right here, professor." Foster spoke up quietly from the other side of the room. Don had almost forgotten that the NSA agent was still present. Foster extended his hand, a data stick in his palm. "Let's get you to the computer room so you can start."

"Computer room?" Charlie's eyes were still glazed, and Don didn't like it. "No. I don't need a computer right now. Not yet. I just need to see the code." He looked around. "My laptop?"

"It's not here, professor. Remember? We put it in the other room, where the mainframe is."

"Oh. Right." Charlie kept looking around. "I need my laptop. Or a computer, with a screen. Something to pull up the document."

"I'll get your laptop, Charlie." Colby disappeared from the doorway, Don only now consciously realizing that the younger agent had been present. He had known that he was there, had taken it as a given that the additional security was standing by. Colby returned in seconds, the laptop in his grasp. He handed it to Charlie.

Charlie almost gratefully plunged into the problem, fingers flying over the keyboard, using the code as an excuse to block out the rest of the world and what it was doing. Don marveled at the change even as he smiled grimly at it; he'd never seen Charlie so shaken—well, no, maybe once. That time at FBI headquarters, when the shooter came in and started shooting up the place. That had freaked his kid brother out. Like that.

This was similar. Now that he'd seen it, Don knew what to look for: the intent look on Charlie's face as he peered closer at the computer screen, the way his left hand shook just a bit more than the right. The way he ignored completely the mug of now distastefully cold coffee that sat at his elbow. Don reached in and pulled the cup away so that it wouldn't get spilled; he doubted that Charlie even noticed.

This was going to take a while.


	5. Cold 5 Numb3rs

Two AM. Don looked at his watch, made a face. Charlie had shown no signs of stopping, no signs of winding down for the night. He'd arrived at about eight last night, had worked from almost the moment he'd stepped off of the helicopter and hit the tarmac. It was like the man was—possessed. Driven, certainly.

Well, yeah, maybe he was. Don's little brother had seem plenty shaken by what had gone on in his office, and, to be honest, Don couldn't blame him. It wasn't every day that terrorists invaded a college professor's office with the intent to kill him. Tended to put a damper on the whole week end plans.

Thinking of which, Don wondered—a bit nervously, to be honest—how Megan made out with his father and with Amita. If anyone could smooth things over, it would be Megan. He looked at his watch again, wishing that he could call the profiler to find out if it had been done and how it turned out. He sighed; he could trust Megan. He could give her an assignment and know that it had been carried out. He didn't need to supervise her every move. It was merely his own insecurities that made him want to call, his need to be in control of things.

He stared at the back of Charlie's head. Even the curls were trembling. It was the concentration, the concerted effort, Don told himself. The man had lost himself gratefully into the problem at hand, wouldn't surface until he'd solved it. There was an untouched sandwich at his elbow, and the tea had long since gone cold. Charlie hadn't noticed when it was brought and, Don suspected, wouldn't notice if Don snitched the sandwich away for his own mid-shift munchies.

He looked at his watch again. Another hour, and he could wake Colby to take over so that Don himself could get some sleep, preferably before the sun poked its nose over the horizon. Of course, Don would want to make the rounds of the soldiers, just to keep the feel of things. Bakker had assured him that he'd assigned a couple men to each of the entrances with instructions to monitor the perimeter with some of the fancy-schmancy gear that Military Appropriations had left for them to play with.

The preliminary report that Megan had given him earlier in the evening was just about as expected: the soldier boys, fine and upstanding citizens, all coming from similar backgrounds. Half from the big bad city, the other half from rural America, none had much formal schooling beyond high school but all had learned important skills in the Army ranging from mechanics to civil engineering on a practical level. Three of them had juvie records, sealed. None had had any serious violations since enlisting, and the occasional parking ticket didn't count. All had been in this squad for the last six months, and all had come home from at least one tour of duty in Iraq, right around Bagdad. It fit; during the meal that had arrived prior to Charlie from the resort some twenty miles away, several of the soldiers had traded stories with David and Colby about overseas, Colby putting in more than his share of comparisons with Afghanistan. All innocent tales—at least as innocent as any of those tales could be, being told by horror-hardened kids barely out of high school. The oldest of them was ten years younger than Don; the Army hadn't wanted to waste any of the more mature types on what they saw as a simple guard detail. Bakker himself turned out to be twenty four and working off his ROTC scholarship before deciding what he wanted to be when he grew up. For now, the Army provided him with an education and a career and enough money for chickenfeed, as well as an opportunity to meet soldiers of the opposite sex. All very straight-forward. There wasn't anything there for Don to take notice of, nothing to suggest that any of them were working for the enemy, whoever that was.

All of which made Don even more nervous. If there was something guaranteed to make sure that an assignment was headed straight for the toilet, it was the indication that it was easy. Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong. The corollary to Murphy's Law, as Charlie had told him a couple of bazillion times: Murphy was an optimist.

He studied his brother once again, seeing him not merely as the NSA consultant that the FBI had been requested to protect on this assignment, but as the little brother he'd grown up with. Don had to admit that he still all too often saw Charlie as the thirteen year old pest of long ago, because that was when Charlie and Mom had moved to the other side of the country to nurture Charlie's 'gift'. That was when, in effect, he'd lost track of Charlie. It was when Charlie had been removed from his life. Not that it mattered all that much at the time, Don had to admit. It was kind of nice not having to worry about a little brother, whether he was getting home safe from school without any of the local bullies trying to pick on him. No, the real problem with Charlie moving out was that he took Mom with him. Charlie had had Mom for a lot more years than Don had, and that still stung, just a bit.

Of course, Don had had his father around, and Charlie didn't. Did that mean anything to his brother, sitting there in front of that computer, attention so completely focused on the problem that nothing else mattered? His brother had moved back to L.A., had spent the last several years with their father while Don was stationed in New Mexico. Charlie had made up for the time that he'd spent apart from his father. Heck, he'd even lived in his father's house, even though he was an adult.

Don sighed. He had to stop thinking of Charlie as that long gone thirteen year old. Things had changed, and his brother along with them; his brother, now fast-tracking his way to a Nobel equivalent, or so everyone said. Still, it was hard to change the direction of his thoughts when his job was pushing them right along same path. Back then, it was protecting Charlie from bullies. Today—tonight, rather—it was protecting him from adult bullies called terrorists.

Maybe things hadn't changed as much as they seemed.

Colby ambled in, knuckling the sleep from his eyes. He used hand signals to communicate without sound. Why, Don wasn't sure since they'd both seen Charlie not budge from a problem with pandemonium erupting around him, but silence continued to abound. _Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd give you an early bedtime._

Don tossed a final glance at the curly dark head. _You got it. I'll do rounds, then turn in_. Another final glance. _See if he'll eat anything_.

Charlie never noticed as his FBI bodyguard changed.

Don paced through the mountain stronghold, noting the concrete walls that still maintained a few cobwebs here and there. _They weren't kidding when they said that this place was an abandoned fortress_, he mused. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous halls. Cameras dotted every intersection, and he waved at one, just to see what would happen.

He wasn't disappointed. The camera wiggled back at him, telling him that the man that Lt. Bakker had assigned to the monitoring post wasn't taking the opportunity to sneak in a cat nap for three or four hours. Bakker had good men, or so it seemed.

Didn't mean that nothing would happen. Don also noticed that more than one light bulb had died a valiant death trying to keep this place lit, and that whoever's job it was to replace them was falling down on the job. That was the problem, Don decided: it wasn't anyone's job. Budget cuts had reduced the housekeeping staff to zero, with the intent that if this place should need to be used, they could send the maid on ahead to tidy up the place before the Really Important People arrived for their vacation from Real Life. In one dark corner, a rat scurried out of sight, favoring Don with a baleful glare before disappearing. Okay, he'd been wrong about that aspect of the place; Don was pretty certain that the rat did not have a high level Security Clearance, which meant that a mouse could indeed infiltrate the place if needed. Since Don wasn't aware of any programs to train mice to carry explosives in a suicide attack, he decided he would let that go for now. The soldiers had done a fair to middling job with a broom prior to Don's arrival, and, considering the amount of acreage that this place boasted, Don decided that they'd worked hard.

Might as well hit the back door first. Don headed in that direction, stopping frequently to consult the helpful maps on the wall since his usual landmarks like the Chandler Pavilion and Rodeo Drive were some thousand miles away. Here, inside the mountain, there weren't even any stars to tell which way was north, so knowing that the back entrance looked out from the north face of the mountain was something less than useful. It took him well over half an hour to get there, feeling more awake with every step although he knew that feeling would change drastically once his head hit a pillow.

Don tried to sneak up on them; it didn't work.

"Evening, sir," one told him, having spotted Don from a corridor away. He jerked his thumb up at the camera over his head and grinned. "Cpl. Rogers has been keeping track of you. Let us know when you were coming."

"Have to thank the good corporal," Don grinned back. "Everything look peaceful?"

"There's a couple of wolves that are a bit on the hungry side," the other soldier told him. "Each of 'em missed a jackrabbit. The owl got it, later," he added. "Other than that, nothing."

"Saw a moose," the first chimed in. "Looked like the one on _Northern Exposure_. You ever see that show?" He shook his head. "First moose I've ever seen outside of the Bronx Zoo."

"City boy," the second scoffed. "Got moose all around up here."

"Yeah, but who kept taking point on the corners of Baghdad? No mooses there—"

Don left them to their discussion.

The front door was just as thick as the back. Don inspected the six inch thick steel, rapping it with his knuckles to hear the deep boom. The singleton army guard looked on with polite interest.

"Wish we'd had some of this protection overseas," the private on duty observed. "There's a lot of metal in that door."

Don nodded. "How long have you been back?"

"A month, now, almost." The kid grinned, and Don recalled that this one, Reynolds was on the name tag, was all of nineteen. He'd enlisted when he was seventeen and a half, with his parents' permission, right out of high school. He was one of the ones with the sealed juvie records, Don remembered, though he'd kept his nose clean since then.

"Got family around here?"

"Naw." The kid shook his head. "They're all back East. Near Philly. South Jersey, actually."

"Bet they're glad you're back in the States."

"My mom is. She didn't like it when I decided to enlist, didn't want me in Baghdad. Not too happy that my unit's going back in another couple of months. My dad convinced her to let me join up."

"Yeah, well, I don't know many mothers who are happy that their sons are in the line of fire." Don's own mother hadn't been, and that was hunting down armed and dangerous criminals state-side. Had to be done, though. "Or their daughters." Thinking of Megan. He changed the subject. "All quiet out there?"

"Saw some lights in the distance," Reynolds told him. "That's where Joe is right now, checking it out. Probably just swamp gas, I told him, but he wanted to go look, and Cpl. Rogers gave him the go-ahead as long as I stayed back by this door. Like anything's gonna be out in this cold," he scoffed, shuddering into his coat.

And it's only fall, Don couldn't help thinking. Couple pockets of snow in the shadows, but that's it.

Which was when his partner came back in. "Nothing there," he reported. He noticed Don right away. "Evening, sir. Or maybe I should say, good morning." He jerked his chin eastward. "At least, it will be in a few hours. Couldn't sleep?"

This was one of the older ones: twenty two, maybe. A world of difference. "Just about ready to turn in." Don indicated the path the soldier had taken. "What did you see?"

"Nothing, sir. All quiet."

"What did you go out after?"

The soldier shrugged. "Thought I saw a couple of lights in the distance."

"And—?" _Brave man, out there all alone. If he really did see lights, it could have been someone after Charlie. If he was seeing things, there still are wolves, and he was alone_.

The soldier shrugged again. "I was wrong. I didn't see anything. At least, nothing that I could find." He shook his head at Don. "This isn't Baghdad, Agent Eppes. There isn't a terrorist around every corner. Reynolds here was right when he said it was probably swamp gas. I didn't find anything."

"Perhaps." But Don took another look at the name tag sewed onto the soldier's chest: Schmidt. He'd have Megan do a deeper check on Schmidt's background. Yeah, Don was probably being paranoid. But, hey—he was paid to be paranoid.

* * *

"Charlie. Charlie!"

"Huh?" Charlie blinked. "Colby? Where's Don?"

"I took over for him over an hour ago," Colby told him. "Dude, you're wasted. How long have you been up?"

Charlie blinked again. He couldn't seem to think, couldn't figure out where he was. Everything was closed in, the walls of unyielding grey concrete, the table an uninspiring gray gun metal color.

_Oh, yeah. The code_. The computer screen had dissolved into fractal images, suggesting that he'd fallen asleep in front of it.

That guess was confirmed when Colby hooked a firm hand under his arm, lifting the smaller mathematician to this feet. "Bed, guy. You're not doing anybody any good like this. Sleep for a few, then get back to work."

Charlie resisted. "No, I have to finish this, Colby. I have to! People are counting on me."

"You're not thinking straight, Charlie." Colby wasn't taking no for an answer and had the muscles to back it up.

Not fair, Charlie thought grumpily. Brawn over brains. Not fair. "Coffee," he requested.

"Not at four AM," Colby told him. "If you're awake at six, I'll bring it to you myself. Deal?"

"No deal," Charlie tried to protest. How had they gotten to this bedroom door? Charlie sank down onto the bed where Colby pushed him, and never did realize when his shoes had come off. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.


	6. Cold 6 Numb3rs

Nine AM. It was Saturday morning, and Don was being generous to his home agent by letting her sleep in a whole hour. _Right._ If Don got only four hours sleep, then Megan could do her share by coming in by nine. He punched in the phone number onto the computer console for communications, the number routing to the direct line to her desk.

"Reeves."

"Megan? Don. What's the word?"

"Which one? There are several. Let me guess which one you want first," she said before Don could answer. "Yes, your father and Amita were notified that you and Charlie are serving your country, details to remain undisclosed until the terms of your service are complete. No, neither one was particularly pleased, although they were grateful to know where you were. Not that they really know where you are; just a figure of speech. And they were even less pleased to hear that they were each acquiring a bodyguard. I understand that your father, realizing that Charlie wouldn't be home to do the chores that he's been dodging for the last three weeks, tried to persuade the bodyguard to do them." Megan took on a different note. "I think we ought to recruit your father, Don, to do interrogation work. Turlow actually fixed the pump to the koi pond before he realized that he'd abandoned his post."

Don grunted, not trusting his voice.

"Amita, on the other hand," Megan continued in the same wicked tone, "was muttering something about reservations for an expensive Italian restaurant tonight and not intending to miss them. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing," Don lied stoutly. _Gonna let Charlie and Amita work this one out_. "Anything on the NSA agent from the attack at Charlie's office at CalSci? Charlie's been asking."

Megan got serious. "Don, I'm pulling a blank here. There's no record of the man in any of the area hospitals. No trauma from CalSci of any sort, not counting the sprained ankle some kid got from playing touch football."

"An alias?"

"Possible, but unlikely. I checked out all the John Doe's coming into all the hospitals around here, and they're all Janes for the past twenty four hours. Now he could be using another name, but the police reports are coming up blank. And, Don, I talked to CalSci security."

"And?"

"Don, they have no record of any altercation anywhere near Charlie's office. They weren't called there, and the guards on duty deny knowing anything about it. I phoned them myself."

"Wait a minute." Don was confused. "Are you telling me that it never happened? That Charlie made it all up?" _Like Charlie could make up that good a story and feed it to me, his brother, that he's never been able to lie convincingly to in his entire life?_

Megan was of the same opinion as her boss. "There's something else going on, Don. There has to be a reason why Charlie told you one thing and I'm finding another story on this end. I'll keep digging. I'll head over to Charlie's office myself, see what I can see."

"You do that," Don agreed. "Also, I want you to dig a little deeper on Private First Class Schmidt."

"Something happen?"

"Not really. Just a little itch that I can't scratch from up here. Probably nothing." _But my brother's life is at stake, not to mention whatever fate for my country that unsolved code refers to_.

* * *

Charlie had moved into the control room where computers whirred all around him. David watched him from a chair carefully positioned near the entrance to the room, trying to keep his attention split between Charlie and the door. 

Charlie wasn't talking, which David found a trifle disconcerting. Charlie _always_ talked, always babbled at a couple trillion words per second when he was on the trail of something. David had frequently taken advantage of that while solving cases. Now the man was silent, darting from one computer bank to another, tapping in instructions into this computer, then that console. It looked like he was making progress.

Except that David didn't think that he was. The haunted look in Charlie's eyes said otherwise. It suggested that Charlie was re-living over and over whatever had happened at his office, and was afraid for his family back in L.A.

What had happened? Megan was still looking into that. Charlie's story wasn't being supported by the facts that Megan had been able to acquire. David had seen Charlie when he'd arrived on the chopper—the man had been seriously spooked. There was no mistaking that, and David flattered himself that he was good enough to see through any charade that Charlie would try to put on. Sure, David could get fooled, but not this time.

_Crack!_

David jumped, whipped his head around. Charlie had slammed his fist down onto the desk in a fit of pique. The man stared up at the tall ceiling, shaking.

"Charlie?"

"It's not working." Whispered. "I'm trying everything, David. I've tried looking at frequencies, I've done the Kasiski exam, I've tried both linear and integral cryptanalysis, and it's not working." Charlie finally looked at him. "I can't decode it." There were circles under his eyes, and it was only ten in the morning. "David, I can't decode it!"

Too much emotion. David recognized that in an instant. "Charlie, man, you gotta slow down."

"I can't slow down, David!" Charlie looked around the room, as if seeking the answer in the concrete blocks. "People's lives are depending on this! I have to solve it!"

_Have to break him out of this before it gets too far_. "Charlie!" David let his voice snap like a whip.

It worked. Charlie looked up, seeing David—_really_ seeing him—for the first time this morning.

David immediately switched gears. "Tell me what you're doing. What have you tried so far?"

Charlie blinked, and tried to cooperate. "I've tried the standards. I've gone through both standard frequency analysis and coincidence retrieval. Both came up blank, which suggests a double key."

"Double key?"

Professor Eppes went into lecture mode; that he could handle. "In modern cryptography, a double key method is frequently used. There is a public key which is known to both parties and usually is able to be fairly easily deciphered. Then there is also a private key, known only to the person doing the encoding. This should have been passed along to the receiving party, in this case the NSA, so that the code can then be deciphered and the message reach the intended party."

"But?"

"None of the public keys are suggesting any sort of insight, which then usually leads to…" Charlie's voice trailed off.

"Charlie?"

A light suddenly gleamed in Charlie's eye. "It's an asymmetric cipher!" he declared. "Of course! It has to be. Which means that I can rely on integer factorization."

"Absolutely," David agreed, having no idea in the slightest what he was agreeing to. That wasn't the point. The object was to get Charlie back on track.

Charlie darted over to one of the computer banks. "Now, if I can just adjust this code so that it…" The words turned into muttering underneath his breath.

The man was gone; not in the physical sense but certainly metaphorical. David turned back to looking down the long corridor, watching for anyone approaching. Not that it was likely to happen here, not with a squad of soldiers manning the perimeter, and a team of FBI agents inside. But orders were orders, and there was a large screen TV in the conference room that in a few hours would be displaying a football game with larger than life figures.

And Sinclair had a wager with a certain army private…

* * *

Both Don Eppes and Lt. Bakker scowled at the screen. And it wasn't the screen of the wide screen TV, currently showing the Maryland Terrapins college football team up by three points. 

The camera was trained on the area just north of the mountain stronghold, some quarter of a mile away. It showed an even half dozen men tromping through the leaves, all armed with rifles and orange hats. They were clearly hunters, taking advantage of the season to do some male bonding, or to escape from home responsibilities, or some combination of the two. It was a bit tough to distinguish between any of them, with the meager afternoon sunlight further diminished by the filtering tree branches. Cpl. Rogers, who had alerted both superiors when the men came into camera range, kept the lens trained on the men, flipping the picture over to another camera when the closer tech toy came into range. Foster positioned himself in the back of the control room, observing the actions of the men in charge.

"Ah could mebbe send a couple of mah men out to turn 'em back," Bakker suggested, his drawl thick in the air. "They may have missed the signs telling 'em to keep out. Or mebbe they've hunted down this way for so long that they figured nobody's home."

"Maybe." It sounded like an entirely reasonable explanation. This stronghold had been abandoned for years. It was likely that hunters had come and gone routinely during that time, weren't expecting to be accosted for being too close to a military base. The likelihood of this being an innocent mistake was very high, that the men outside were civilians out for a lark. But Don could feel the man from the NSA behind his shoulder, watching his every move, waiting for him to make the error that would get them all killed and allow the next terrorist disaster to occur. Yet… "Send out a couple of men. I'll have Colby go with them."

"Fair 'nuff." Bakker tabbed a control. "Schmidt, Riley, back door. Wait fer the FBI guy to catch up with you, then go out and turn those fellers around. Do it polite if you can, but git 'em out of this area. Got it?"

"On it, lieutenant. Wait for the FBI guy, and show the visitors the way home."

Don stared at the screen, as if those hunters out there would do something suspicious, something that he could point to and say 'aha'. Foster too was silent. "I don't like it," Don mused.

Bakker said nothing, but Don could hear the thoughts in the lieutenant's head. _Gittin' rattled, FBI man?_

_Yeah, I'm getting rattled, lieutenant. But those are the same instincts that have saved my ass too many times before to ignore them._ Don himself opened a communications link. "Colby? Get the names of those hunters while you're out there. I want to run them through some databases, just to be on the safe side."_ I've got a brother to protect, not to mention a team of crack FBI agents and a squad of army boys with families who want them home in one piece_.

"On it, boss." Colby's voice sounded tinny over the airwaves.

* * *

Colby wasn't certain, but it felt like he'd grown up not too far from here. Hiking though the back woods of Idaho had been his passion while a kid, and this place just _smelled_ like home. Hell, this could be anywhere in the Great Northwest, but Colby'd bet dollars to donuts that he'd lived less than two hundred miles away. Right kind of trees, right kind of dirt beneath his feet. _Oh_ yeah, this was home. He spotted some wolf tracks in the soft mud; big ones, suggesting that the hunting for small game was pretty good. Have to watch out for those wolves; big enough pack might even take on a lone man if the pack was hungry enough. Didn't have to worry right now. Had a couple of soldiers at his back and a rifle in his hands. No hand guns at the moment. Here, watching guard over Charlie, this called for heavy duty weaponry. The gun felt oddly familiar in Colby's hands. 

Didn't take more than ten minutes to find the dudes that had tripped the radar. There were six of them, all dressed alike in heavy coats and those stupid orange hats that pointed them out for stupid hunters in the woods so as not to get shot by those stupid hunters who pointed their guns before they knew what they were aiming at. Colby assessed them for a good sixty seconds, holding the soldiers behind him, before deliberately breaking a stick to warn the hunters that there was someone else in the vicinity.

All six of the trespassers jerked to attention, guns held almost at ready.

"Whoa, settle it down, fella's," Colby called out. No need to get shot if he didn't have to. "Mind telling me what you're doing here?"

The guns lowered, but only just so much. "Mind telling me who's asking?"

Good English, but hadn't grown up in this country. Stupid orange hats covered too much of the faces, too. Instincts aroused, Colby hardened his voice. "You're on government property, gentlemen. This is a military base, and these are some of Uncle Sam's finest behind me. Now: what are you doing here?"

"What does it look like we're doing? We're hunting."

"I guess you missed the 'No Trespassing' signs."

"Guess they blew down."

"Guess we're gonna have to make sure that they're still there while we escort you out of here," Schmidt said from beside Colby, his own gun firm in his hands. "You got a problem with that? Or should I call up the other dozen of us to help you understand that around here is off-limits to civilians?"

The mouthy one backed down. "We'll just head back to where we came from. No problem here, boys." He turned to go.

"Hang on a sec. Gonna need your names, gentlemen." Colby wasn't finished.

"There's no need—"

"I say there is." Now his instincts were thoroughly engaged. There was something here that Colby really didn't like, although he couldn't put his finger on it. Not the point, at the moment. He pulled out some paper, and pointed at the mouthy one. "You. Name and address."

The mouthy one glared. "You want my serial number, too?"

Colby wasn't cowed. "You ex-military?"

"Nope. You? You're not in uniform like the other two."

Colby ignored the comment. "Your social security number should do just fine."

It took more than ten minutes to collect all the names, but Colby didn't begrudge the time spent. He also didn't mind the camera trained on his back, ready to pull those dozen soldiers from inside to this spot if this started to get a little bit more ugly. He didn't mind saying that these hunters here were alerting all of his spidey senses. Anyone sensible, they'd have apologized and backed off on the spot, not wanting to get involved with the US military. These guys, they had to push. And that was pushing Colby's buttons.

Colby finished jotting down all the names, addresses, and socials, feeling more and more concerned by the moment. All the names were of Anglo-Saxon derivation: Smith. Jones. Lee. Baker. Watson. Even a Holmes, with the first name of Robert. And the names didn't fit what the men looked like: all with an absence of very light skin, all looking as though they came from the very bottom part of Sicily or further south, with dark skin to match. Straight dark hair, what he could see of it underneath those damn caps, except for one with bright red hair. Dark brown eyes, not a set of blue ones among them. And the coats: identical, every one of 'em. As if they'd been purchased on sale at the local Army-Navy store.

Not about to push, not here and not at this instant in time. Colby was out-manned, and out-gunned. There were six of them, and only three of him: him and Schmidt and Riley. And Riley, at least, was a nineteen year old kid with a year of jumping at bullets being fired at him. Not the type to keep it cool, not here. Schmidt, a little older, would keep it together but Riley was likely to explode in a way that would be tough to explain back here in the States.

Colby snapped his pad shut, tucking the pen into an inside pocket. "Time to go, gentlemen," he announced. "Which way toward your camp?"

They looked at each other. "East," said the mouthy one who'd given his name as Holmes.

Colby looked. The forest was thicker that way, and the men had been approaching from the north.

"We can find our way back," another put in, daring Colby to disagree. He hitched his gun up a little higher in his hands.

"We'll escort you off of government property," Colby said. That was regulation. Needed to make sure that these dudes were gone, at least beyond camera range. And he wanted to see which way these chuckle-heads went.

"That won't be necessary."

"I think—" Colby started to say, when he heard the unmistakable _snick_ of half a dozen automatic rifles being cocked behind him. He froze.

"I think it is, gentlemen." Don Eppes stepped out from the bush, Lt. Bakker and six more soldiers behind him, all armed with automatics. All those rifles were held shoulder high, all aimed at the hunters. The soldiers spread out, a semi-circle around the hunters. Colby and the other two eased themselves back, out of the line of fire, their own weapons held high.

"My congressman will hear about this," the mouthy one tried to say.

"Go right ahead," Don invited, keeping his rifle trained on the man with the easy stance of a man thoroughly comfortable with his gun. "I'm sure he'd like to hear about you and your friends trespassing on military property. Now, all of you: put your weapons down on the ground. Do it!" he ordered, at their hesitation. "Colby, Lt. Bakker, pull the ammo out. We'll be returning your guns and your ammunition once you're outside of the perimeter. And I'm going to advise you gentlemen in the future to pay attention to the signs. It could save your lives."


	7. Cold 7 Numb3rs

"I tried the Diffie-Hillman key exchange method, but that too failed." Professor Eppes was lecturing once again, only this time oblivious to his students' non-comprehension.

That was irrelevant, at least to his 'students'. Both David Sinclair and Steven Foster were camped out in the computer room with Professor Eppes, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the events occurring outside. There were a couple of jeeps standing ready in the mechanics' bay; Bakker had sent two of his men down there to wait in case a fast departure for their visiting dignitary seemed like the best idea. The resort where their meals were coming from was the closest source of help and would make for a good fall back area, although neither Don nor Bakker wanted to expose any civilian types to what would undoubtedly be following them. The two soldiers, in addition to preparing the jeeps, had been tasked with determining the best route to an army base some hundred miles beyond.

Charlie, however, was still focused on his own task, too engrossed to notice the frequent looks down the corridor or the hands that remained poised over the handguns in unsnapped holsters. "I have a novel approach," he continued. "I came across it in conversation with Larry, something close to how physics chooses to look at an exploding sun and how the hydrogen atoms literally tear themselves apart. There's an actual science to the characterization of the actions, and where there's science, there's math. This suggested a method of determining the characteristics of the asymmetric logarithm that some of the more intriguing codes can use, a variation on a scatter plot analysis but configured over four dimensions, the fourth dimension, of course, being time."

"Of course," Foster echoed, not paying attention. The chatter in his earpiece was far more intriguing to the NSA agent, that chatter being filtered through the central communications console by the private in the command booth and wobbling its way into his link.

Then: "oh, wow."

"Charlie?" David was only half-listening. The other half was also fixated on earpiece chatter.

"I think it's working."

"Good."

"No, David, I mean, I really think it's working. And I think it's coming out with an answer."

"Good." Not the most important thing at the moment, in David's mind. Staying alive ranked a little bit higher on his list of priorities. The answer would be there when they got to some place safe. Assuming that a hasty exit was called for.

"It's going to take a while," Charlie continued. Oblivion went both ways. "With the advent of faster and more powerful computers, the number of elements to any key has increased exponentially, with the result that many codes are literally unbreakable without the assistance of brute force computations. Think of a spreadsheet: you plug in the numbers, and you get a response. You change one number, and all the rest automatically adjust to the new input."

"Absolutely, professor." Foster peered down the corridor. A mouse scampered along the far end, and Foster almost shot it.

"Oh."

That had a different note to it. David looked up. "Charlie?"

Charlie now was looking more satisfied. "I think these may end up being names and dates, David. I think that's the solution to the key. It's coming together."

"Good." The situation outside was also coming together, and that was even better to David's and Foster's ears. The hunters' weapons were on the ground, and the ammo being shaken out. The intruders were disarmed. The FBI and the Army were in control. David started once again to breathe.

"It's still going to take a while," Charlie warned them. "This is the plaintext piece of it, and I'll still have a lot of work to do before I can decipher exactly what it says. But this was the hard part. I mean, one of the hard parts. Now I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to crack this thing eventually." He sat back in his chair, satisfied, ready to take a short break while the massive computers in the room performed their part of the operation.

David finally paid direct attention to his charge. The situation outside had been defused, and Don and some of the team of soldiers were coming back inside. Colby and Lt. Bakker were remaining behind to escort the hunters off of the grounds. David put on a big smile, heading back to the process of keeping Charlie talking in order to keep his thoughts flowing. "How's it coming, Charlie?"

Charlie rolled his eyes.

* * *

"I've got a date tonight," Megan sniffed from a thousand miles away in sunny L.A. Or maybe not so sunny, since it was late afternoon and the sun was making serious noises about dropping below the watery horizon. It was toastier there than where he was currently, and Don's feet still hadn't warmed up from being outside. The ground outside the bunker had been wet with melted snow, and the wet had seeped into his boots. Changing into dry shoes had helped but the cold still lingered. 

"Break it," Don ordered. Those hunters had acted very oddly, and Don wanted answers. He wanted them now, before something else happened. "I need that info, before anything else goes down."

"Don't think so, Eppes. Not this one."

"Megan—"

"I'm taking the shift as bodyguard for Amita," Megan informed him archly. "There's a little matter of these reservations at Il Barone…"

"Can't someone else take her?"

"Not a chance. All the bodyguards available are male. What if she gets ambushed in the ladies' room? Besides, how often can I put a bill for Il Barone onto the NSA's expense account?"

"Pushing it, Reeves."

"If you can expense a trip to Cabo for David and a day of deep sea fishing for Colby and his buds, you can handle a simple little restaurant check." Megan's smile even crossed a thousand miles of bleak wires. "Give me the names, Don. I'll have someone here run them down, and I'll have them for you in the morning. Deal?"

"Deal," Don grumbled. "How's my father taking this?"

"Very nicely," Megan told him.

That was a surprise. He'd expected his old man to be grumbling non-stop. "Megan?" There was something else there.

"He's escorting us to Il Barone," Megan said. "I'm guarding them both."

"Which lets out your ladies' room excuse," Don pointed out. Then it hit him. "Megan—?"

"Yes, Don, Dr. Fleinhardt is conducting an experiment, to see if Il Barone is capable of producing a three course meal composed of entirely white foods."

* * *

Don pulled both David and Colby together to one side, keeping his voice down. Charlie was on the other side of the room with Foster and Bakker and some of the off-duty soldiers, watching the college fans pulling their usual shenanigans in the stands on the wide screen TV. It was a night game, and the stadium lights were glinting across the cameras. The buffet style munchies from the local resort were as good as the NSA had claimed, and the soldiers and the rest were chowing down as if they'd been starved for the last three weeks. 

"I heard from Megan," Don said quietly. "She'll have the scoop on our hunting party sometime tomorrow, but she was able to do a little more checking on Schmidt. Looks career military, been in for a tour and re-upped. Like the rest, he's been in Baghdad, although he's also spent some time in Germany. His record is clean."

"So he's good," Colby said. "Not a mole."

"I don't know." Don risked a look at the group. Someone had just caught a long ball, and a cheer went up, Schmidt cheering right along with them. Charlie too looked more at ease; the computers were doing some heavy duty number-crunching, and until that had been completed Charlie was, as he had said, superfluous. Foster, however, had plunked himself in the chair next to Charlie, quietly but clearly staking his claim to security. If the FBI wasn't going to stick close by the oh so valuable hired consultant, the NSA man would. Don looked back at Schmidt. "Schmidt went out, the first night we were here."

"Yeah, you told us," Colby agreed. "He said he saw something. He was doing his job, Don, checking stuff out."

"He probably was." Don frowned, trying to figure out what it was that he didn't like about the man. Was it just because it was Charlie at stake here? Was Don losing his objectivity over this?

No, that just didn't feel like the right answer. There was something amiss here, something his subconscious had picked up and his conscious self wasn't listening to.

He sighed. Nothing to be done about it now. "Keep an eye on the man," he instructed. "If he's dirty, something'll show. For now, just watch. And don't take any chances."

One corner of David's mouth edged upwards. "Hey, he's an Eagles fan. He's gotta be dirty."


	8. Cold 8 Numb3rs

Don stretched, reaching long arms toward the ceiling, pulling muscles back into alignment. It had been a long day, starting too early, and it was going to end too late into the night. David was scheduled to take over guard duty at two AM, and Don was looking forward to the next hour flying by.

Who knew that Charlie would head back to the computer instead of his bed like any sane man at eleven o'clock at night? Well, yeah, after so many years of growing up with his brother, Don ought to have known better. How many times as a kid in school had Charlie been caught with a flashlight, working out just one more problem? Some kids read comic books under the covers when they were supposed to be sleeping. Charlie did math. From some of the things that their mother had said when she'd called home while Charlie was at Princeton, he figured out that Charlie had pulled plenty of all-nighters, not because he had to but because a challenge had intrigued him.

So, yeah, Don should have guessed that after the game was over Charlie, unlike any sane man, would head back to see how the computer was coming along with its part of the deciphering process instead of taking a break and heading off to bed to get a fresh start in the morning. The sheer quantity of calculations, Charlie told him, was enough to make a Cray shudder in fear. He hadn't thought that the answers would come through until sometime around four, but he'd been wrong. These DOD computers, not having anything better to do with their electrons, had poured their little electronic hearts into the task and had come up with the answers in record time.

Except it wasn't the answer; not quite, Charlie told him. It was just half of the answer. That was what made it asymmetric. Which didn't mean much to Don except for _not finished yet_, and that Charlie was diving in yet again.

At midnight. When all good little mathematicians ought to be asleep, so that Don himself didn't have to pretend to be interested in what Charlie was doing. The subject was awake, so the FBI team was on duty. When the subject retired for the night, the FBI team could stand down and let the Army perimeter guard take the forefront. It was a lot easier to hang out around a sleeping Charlie's door than it was watching the man pour over the computer print outs. Don stretched again, willing himself to keep his eyelids open. Bed was looking better and better.

"Don."

"Charlie?" Don came awake. There was that _note_ in Charlie's voice, the sound that said _this is important_. "What is it?"

"Don, this is big stuff."

"We already knew that, buddy—"

"No, I mean really big, Don." Charlie paused, gathering his thoughts. "Does the name Achmed bin Muzawin mean anything to you?"

Don felt his blood run cold. He gulped. "You might say that." Only the third most wanted terrorist in the world. Said to be the mastermind behind half the attacks in London, and responsible for setting up at least two-thirds of the terrorist cells currently operating inside of US borders. The man was also the genius behind most of the financial dealings that supplied fully one quarter of the funding that kept the Middle East terrorists in business. Every FBI office in the country had Muzawin's picture posted prominently in each and every office, promising rewards, bonuses, and promotions to whichever agent was clever or lucky enough to bring him in, and there was an entire CIA task force dedicated to trying—and failing—to bring the man to justice. "Are you telling me that this code you're deciphering is about him?"

Charlie frowned. "I'm not sure. There are still some parts that aren't clear. It might be."

Don took a deep breath. "But what does it say, Charlie?" _Keep it calm, Eppes. Charlie doesn't realize how big this is._

Or maybe he did. Charlie looked him straight in the eye. "Don, I can't be certain, but I think this may be _from_ Muzawin. I think it might be his travel itinerary. And maybe some other stuff."

_Oh, yeah, this is big. This could be call-up-the-president big._ Don tried to decide what to do with this intelligence.

No, not intelligence yet. There was still more work to be done. Charlie himself said that there was more to be deciphered, and that he wasn't quite certain of the contents. And there was a mole in the NSA, which meant that sharing this little piece of intel with them might be a quick way to get blown up and buried in this bunker if the NSA hadn't yet cleaned house. "How much longer before it's time to share, Charlie?"

Charlie shrugged, trying to keep his nerves under control. "Best guess, another six hours or so. Maybe longer. It'll depend on if I get lucky, and guess which short cut works." He glanced at the clock on the wall. Military time was easy to decipher at one AM, not that Charlie had any trouble in that arena. It was a number. It was part of him. "Guess I'm going to be up for a while longer. Don't think I could sleep at this point." The dark circles under his eyes and the haunted look he wore suggested that his words were something less than accurate, and that the last forty eight hours had not been easy ones.

Don had to agree with the thought, but for himself and not for his brother. The sleepies had just vanished, and Don wasn't ashamed to admit that he was thinking of calling for additional troops for more firepower until he could hand this hot potato back over to the NSA. A few more FBI types? A possibility, but requesting additional personnel would surely be a red flag for whoever was watching this week end get together. It would be a signal that Charlie not only had succeeded at his task but that he—and Don—recognized how important it was. "You gonna be able to keep going? You've been at it a long time. You look tired, buddy. Take a break."

Charlie looked at Don with a strange look. "Don, this is important. I have to keep going."

"Sure, but that doesn't mean that you have to go at it twenty-four/seven, Charlie. Take a break. You'll be able to think better in the morning."

"Morning?"

Don grinned. Yeah, it would be tough to realize exactly what time it was in here. Lack of windows tended to do that. And since Charlie had just looked at the clock, saw that it was one AM and never actually inhaled the information…"Morning, Charlie. As in, it's after midnight right now. You've been working at this for more than twenty-four hours. You try to go without sleep for too much longer, and you'll fall over in your tracks."

Charlie looked around himself, as if just now realizing what kind of place he'd been in for the last two days, working almost non-stop. "Yeah. Well, maybe not."

Don pushed. "Sleep would be a good thing."

"There's always caffeine."

"There's always bopping you over the head, Chuck."

Crooked grin. Weary sigh. Charlie gave in. "G'night, Don."

* * *

All right, so Don was getting paranoid. Given the circumstances, who wouldn't? Don turned David away from the cameras that the army types were manning and put his mouth close to David's ear. "Charlie's making progress."

"And?" At two in the morning, with the resident genius finally asleep on the bunk in his quarters and the changing of the FBI guard outside those quarters, David could figure out in a flash that there was something big happening. After all, he was an experienced investigative agent.

But two in the morning didn't lend itself to humor, and neither Don nor David was in the mood for laughter.

"It's big, David."

"Didn't figure it would be anything small. How big?"

Don made certain that he couldn't be heard by anyone else. "Muzawin big."

Sudden intake of breath. "Charlie's sure?"

"Not yet, but he's getting there."

"No wonder the NSA's antsy over this. Any mole gets hold of this, we're finished." David rocked back on his heels, thinking. "Charlie know how big this is?"

"Not completely, but he's not clueless, either. He's been involved with this kind of crap for years. They don't call him in for the little stuff." Don looked around, as if there might be someone prancing down the corridors that they wouldn't hear. Sound echoed through these concrete bunkers and didn't stop until it flopped onto the floor in exhaustion. "And if the NSA is worried about a mole…"

"Yeah." David too scanned the corridors. A useless gesture, but instinctual. "What do we know about Foster?"

"Next to nothing. I'd like to think that the NSA would _only_ send out someone that they know is beyond reproach. They must have had an inkling as to what was going on. After all," and Don waved at the solid walls surrounding them, "we're here behind a dozen feet of concrete and a mountain."

David nodded slowly. "So where do we go with this?"

"For the moment, we sit tight. We let Charlie keep working, keep solving the puzzle. Once we have more answers, we'll know who we can trust."

"You're paranoid; you know that?"

"Yeah. But we're alive."

* * *

Yeah, it was good coffee and it was nine o'clock in the morning and Don was much more awake after six hours in the sack. Scuttlebutt was right: the food sent over by the area resort was top notch, and Don sipped at the scalding hot brew, feeling it scorch the taste buds off of his tongue and replace them with scar tissue. Lt. Bakker's men had returned not twenty minutes ago with the day's rations. Nuking them in a microwave wasn't the way to improve the flavor but it didn't do too badly and Don wasn't complaining. He'd eaten plenty worse in his day.

He waited for the communications console to fire up. "Megan?"

"Good morning, Don. It's a balmy seventy four degrees here and, as usual, little to no humidity. I enjoyed walking in from the parking lot. I even gave a couple of pigeons my last crust from the pretzel vendor outside on the walk."

"Here the pigeons are hawks, there's frost on the ground, and the pretzel stand is manned by a pack of wolves. Bakker's boys told me that they nearly skidded the jeep off the road on an ice patch while fetching our food. What do you have for me?"

Megan grew serious. "We got back the results on the names that you sent over from that little 'hunting party' in the woods. Don, there's almost a dozen men with the same names for each of them in your area and none of the socials match. We can run them all down, but it will take time and manpower; lots of it. And that's assuming that one or more of your party actually goes by those names."

Don shrugged, even though Megan couldn't see it over the comm. line. "Don't bother. It was a long shot. Even with the manpower, we'd never be able to run those guys down. It's a good bet that each one was a fake name. They weren't trying to hide that." He shrugged again. "Charlie'll have this thing decoded soon, and we can hand the whole mess back over to the NSA."

"He's making progress?"

"He's making progress," Don confirmed. "Real progress, Megan, and it's scary."

Megan gave her own unseen frown. "Don't tell me; I don't want to know. Actually, I would like to know but I'm not sure I want to trust even this secure communication channel. I'll wait for the evening news."

"With any luck, it won't end up there either," Don told her grimly.

"Wow. That big." Megan was unhappily impressed. "Then it won't surprise you that I wasn't able to find out much on Schmidt."

"Just give me what you've got."

"Born just outside of Philadelphia—south Jersey, I think, little place called Swedesboro—twenty one years old, joined the Army right out of his junior year of high school."

"Didn't graduate?"

"No, but did get his GED two years later, at nineteen. What little I have says that it was at the behest of his platoon sergeant. Did pretty well on the tests, the research shows."

"Don't tell me; let me guess. He's one of the ones with a sealed juvie record. Any luck unsealing it?"

"You'd have more chance at unsealing Larry's spinster aunt's bloomers, Don. Legal says that there's not enough evidence to ask a judge even on a whim. Investigating a soldier just because he went out alone to check up on a shadow while on a mission won't cut it, even with the weight of Homeland Security behind us."

"Probably wouldn't tell us much anyway." Don dismissed that thought. It wasn't going to happen. "What else?"

"Recently re-upped for another tour," Megan said, papers rustling in her hands. "Very little on his record. Nothing especially good or bad. Saw action in Afghanistan. Got along with the locals. Kept under the radar."

Don frowned. It all fit together neatly. Maybe too neatly? Keeping under the radar was something that any good spy or mole would be likely to do.

On the other hand, the mole was in the NSA, not the Army. Don was most likely simply jumping at shadows. Schmidt was merely doing his job, going out to figure out what caused some little blip on the internal radar, keeping the consultant safe. He had gone alone because there was only two of them on guard duty at the back door, and calling for back up was not only over-kill but meant dragging some sleepy comrade out of his nice warm blankets for something that very well could have been a coyote slinking through the underbrush.

Yeah, he was being paranoid. This mission was going like clock work, despite all the angst. Charlie was deciphering the code at breakneck speed. The suspect soldier really wasn't a suspect. The hunting party that really wasn't could easily have been a bunch of stray Canadians well aware that they had crossed over the border without bothering with Customs, and weren't about to 'fess up to suspicious authorities and cause an international incident.

On the other hand, Special Agent Don Eppes was being _paid_ to be suspicious.

"How about the incident at Charlie's office?" he asked. "Anything more?"

"Not a thing. I talked to the professors in the adjoining offices. Professor Langton heard a scuffle, but then something called the 'Warwick Convention' dragged his attention away and he didn't think anything of it."

"Eggheads," Don grunted. "Anyone else?"

"Not a soul. Most of the professors had already skedaddled for the week end, getting an early start. Don, I looked at Charlie's office. If there was anything going on there, you couldn't tell it by the way the office looked. No furniture was overturned, no papers floating around; nothing. But there was one small item."

"What?"

"Charlie's desk. There was a bullet hole. But it looked old."

"Old? Charlie said someone took a shot at him. It should be fresh."

"Right. And this could have been someone scratching something into the desk. I'm telling you, Don, I looked at it myself, and it looked like it had been there for months if not years."

"Which doesn't make sense."

"Right. Which is why I've asked a Forensics team to go out and take a look," Megan told him.

"On a Sunday? With over time?"

"It'll be pretty late," Megan admitted, "and only if they have time to get to it. If not today, then tomorrow."

Things were not adding up, and it wasn't because the target was a mathematician. Don frowned, not caring that Megan couldn't see his expression. "Have them get out there today, Megan, on my authority. And see what you can find on our on-site NSA man, Stephen Foster."

"Like the composer?"

"The very one. And keep digging, Megan," he said finally. "Listen to the street. I want to know if there's any movement among the various government factions, anything to indicate that the subversive elements of the world are getting busy. I'm not liking this whole scenario, and I've got the feeling that there's a lot more going on than we've been led to believe."

"You got it, Don. Talk to you later this afternoon."


	9. Cold 9 Numb3rs

Charlie glared at his brother. "Why didn't you wake me?" He bit into a sandwich which, at eleven in the morning, was serving as both breakfast and lunch.

Don returned his brother's glare with mild superiority. He looked pointedly at his watch. "Did we oversleep, Chuck?"

"Don—!"

Don grinned. Just like when they were in high school: Charlie would stay up half the night 'working' on whatever problem had taken his fancy, then would oversleep the next day and be dashing around getting ready for school. His kid brother was lucky that their mom was always prepared to drive him in instead of catching the schoolbus, it happened so much. Don remembered the unspoken relief on Mom's face when, senior year, Don had gotten his driver's license and drove them both in with that old Chevy that he'd worked so hard to earn. Although there were a few times when they walked in after the bell…

"Give it a rest, buddy. There's no Principal Morgenstern to mark you late. You get to work at your own pace for a while and you needed the sleep. Besides, it's Sunday."

"Yeah?" Charlie was not ready to be mollified. "Tell that to the NSA, Don. Or this Muzawin guy you're so worried about." He took another ferocious bite, followed it up with a swig of whatever was in his glass. "Tell that to Mildred Finch, who's going to have to find someone to cover my classes tomorrow. You know how she feels about me working for the FBI."

"Yeah, but this isn't the FBI," Don pointed out. "This is the NSA. This is Homeland Security. You trying to tell me that Dr. Finch isn't patriotic? That she doesn't care about the well-being of her country? Charlie, I'm surprised that you have such an unflattering view of your boss."

Charlie opened his mouth. He closed it again, unable to think of any comeback on a moment's notice, something that would suit but wouldn't get him into trouble if repeated in the presence of his boss, his colleagues, or his father. He settled for scowling. "I'm going back to the computer room."

"Sounds good to me." It did; the sooner Charlie solved the cipher, the sooner Don could turn this mess back to the NSA. Don glanced at his watch. "I'll let Colby know to meet us there."

"You don't have to keep following me around like a puppy dog, Don," Charlie complained.

"Beg to differ, Chuck. Regs."

"Don—"

"What, they don't do this at NSA headquarters?"

"No, they don't. They leave me alone to do my work."

"And how many armed guards are there at NSA headquarters, Chuck?"

"What?"

"How many armed guards?" Don repeated innocently. "What, there's a number that you can't quote from off of the top of your head? How many guards are at the various entrances, already protecting your ass from the moment that you walk through the gate and flash your credentials? How many agents are inside, all trained in hand to hand combat just in case somebody nasty gets inside?" He grew serious. "Yes, Charlie, I'm going to keep following you around this damn underground complex, because that's my job: to keep you safe so that you can keep this country safe by doing your thing. And if I'm not doing it, then either David or Colby will be taking my place. Got it?"

Charlie flushed. "Yeah." He turned away, giving himself a moment, and Don saw that his brother still looked exhausted, that the emotional toll of the past two days was still present. He grimaced. Maybe Megan hadn't been able to find any concrete evidence that the attack at Charlie's office had taken place, but Don was looking at all the proof he needed right here in the form of his brother. Charlie didn't necessarily see things the way others did, but it was pretty hard to contradict him when he said, "those two NSA agents fought off three thugs right in front of me." Details could be missed, but not the general concept.

Which meant that it had _happened_, that someone was out to get Charlie and the code he was working on. Which meant that Don intended to stick like glue to his little brother until he finished cleaning up this mess.

* * *

The big screen TV was everything that the NSA had promised that it would be, and more. The players were larger than life, the football the size of a watermelon, and the cheerleaders' pompoms were— 

Don cut that thought off. _Not while on business, Eppes_. Half of the Army types were there, having foregone the luxury of sleep in favor of watching the Dolphins trounce the Rams or vice versa, yelling and/or cheering each play that was made. The beer wasn't flowing—Lt. Bakker knew his men—but they made do with the bottles of pop and had already placed an order for pizza with the local pizzeria located a half hour away from the resort that supplied the rest of their food. The rest of the food that the resort provided was even better: buffalo wings with a sauce to scald taste buds, other foods that were guaranteed to harden arteries within one to two business days…

"He was out of bounds," Don protested. "Didn't you see where his feet were? Out of bounds. On this screen, you can't miss anything. Damn referee needs glasses," he grumbled.

"Yer jist pissed 'cause the Rams are losing, Special Agent Eppes," Bakker drawled with a grin, the words coming out more slowly just to annoy Don. "'Fraid of losing that little wager we got goin'?"

"Damn right I am," Don told him, one corner of his mouth heading up toward the ceiling. "It's one thing to lose because the Rams turn into mutton stew, but to lose it to the refs…"

"Breaks of the game, Special Agent Eppes. Breaks of the game."

Yeah. Don allowed himself a moment of pleasure when the next play turned in the Rams' favor. "Interception!" he yelled with the rest.

But still on duty. Always on duty, and the duty part of him was wondering why the NSA agent had walked in some fifteen minutes after the game had started. Sure, the clock had only ticked off four minutes of actual play, but everyone else not on duty was here. The man had a suspiciously chapped look about him, as though he'd been outside in the cold.

_Keep it casual, Eppes_. Don hoisted himself up to his feet and fetched himself another slice of pizza with something indefinable as a side order. He dropped himself into the chair next to Foster. "Rams or Dophins?"

Foster shrugged. Don looked again; yeah, color was coming back into the NSA agent's face as he warmed up. What had the man been doing outside? Foster regarded the large screen. "Gotta admit, Eppes: neither one. But I'm kind of hoping to see the Rams pull this one out. They'll be easier for the Patriots to crush come Super Bowl time."

"Ah, a New England fan?" A detail to give Megan in her search for info on the various players. "Grow up around those parts?"

The look that Foster gave him told Don that Foster knew exactly what Don was after. The air grew just a little frostier. "No." And left it at that.

Not going any further. Don removed himself to a chair toward the back of the room where he could observe everyone in it, including Foster.

Bakker had allowed the guards to post only one man on each entrance with one more to man the communications console, so that the rest could enjoy the game with the plan of replacing those men at half-time. He had obtained his own set of comm. links from the bunker stores, and currently kept tabs every few minutes or so from his men on guard duty as an extra precaution, and Don could see him muttering quietly into that link, keeping his voice down except when the Dolphins made a spectacular play, good or bad. A play by play commentary? Could be. Bakker would want to keep his men happy, and that meant keeping them caught up in the action as well as making sure that there wasn't anything suspicious going on outside. Once he stiffened, and Don came on alert, but then the shoulders slumped back down to normal, and Don surmised that the guard called back in. Don raised his eyebrows at Lt. Bakker, and the lieutenant shook his head: false alarm.

Don sympathized; he was doing the same thing with Colby, letting the man hear the sports commentators over Don's own link to keep up with the action and hearing back a couple of words from Colby to let Don know that everything was copasetic on Charlie's end.

"Still buzzing around like a hamster on speed," Colby muttered into his comm. link. "Not a sign of anyone else."

"Good, 'cause Miami just got a field goal," Don groaned.

"Hey, it could'a been a touchdown, Don. Be grateful."

Don couldn't help but worry. This was all too peaceful. It was going too smoothly. Something was going to happen.

_You're paranoid, Eppes. Sit your ass back down and enjoy the game_.

First quarter over, Dolphins up by a field goal. Don couldn't stand it any more, had to make the rounds. He stood up.

Bakker, instantly on guard, looked at him with the question written plain: _trouble?_

Don shook his head. _Need to stretch my legs. Be back in a few_. He crossed to David, his man with a healthy serving of veggie-laden pizza in his hand. "Take over listening to Colby. I'm going to do a circuit."

"Everything okay, Don?"

"Yeah. I'm just getting spooked by nothing. Sit tight."

"I'm due to relieve Colby at half time. You want me to do it?"

"Nah. Enjoy the game. I'll be back in a few. Take Charlie some pizza when you go, will you? Don't bother with the wings; he'll bitch about the mess on his fingers getting onto the keyboard."

"You got it." David switched his own comm. link on, hooking Colby into the action.

Still, the stiffness in David's shoulders told Don that now both of his agents were just that little bit more tense because of Don's actions. Could be nothing, probably _was_ nothing. He was getting his people concerned for no good reason. This might even cause them to ease back later on, when it was needed, could cause a fatal error at the worst possible time.

Don couldn't help it. He was letting the situation get to him, that he knew, but he couldn't help it. It was too quiet. Something was in the process of going down. He needed to check.

First: his brother. Colby was sitting in a chair at a table to one side of the room, watching Charlie skitter from one computer to another, pausing at the paperwork on the worktable in between, muttering to himself in barely audible sounds. There was an open magazine in front of the younger agent but Colby wasn't looking at it. He was alternately watching Charlie and then the corridor to the work room. He saw Don coming the moment his team leader turned the corner. He got up silently, coming to the doorway. He kept his voice down. "Everything okay, Don?"

Don glanced at Charlie. "Yeah. I'm just walking off my nerves. How's he doing?" No need to ask who 'he' was. The hands, with a chewed pencil, were stenciling in notations along the edges of the hard copy, then the pencil got stuck behind an ear while Charlie tapped in another set of instructions into the computer banks that were struggling to keep up with his demands. There was a drink of something unidentifiable on the corner of the table but it looked old and untouched. Don could just bet that his brother had forgotten all about it.

Colby shrugged helplessly. "Don't ask me. He's been in his own world."

"He getting any closer to finishing?"

"Beats me. You want we should ask him?"

Don considered. "Nah. We'll only interrupt his train of thought. He'll talk to us when he's ready." He glanced at his watch.

Colby correctly interpreted the look. "Dolphins still up by three; the quarter's been scoreless so far. David says another ten minutes of playing time until the half."

Don nodded. "I'm going to make the rounds of the army brats on guard duty. Don't let 'em know that I'm coming. Let's see if they're paying attention."

"Oh, they're paying attention, boss. Lt. Bakker'll have their hides if they don't, no matter how much they're listening to the play by play. You wanna bet that he hasn't warned them? I can use an extra fifty bucks."

Don chuckled. There were good men here, doing a good job. "Not born yesterday, Colby. Keep an eye open for trouble."

"You got it, boss. Tell Sinclair that I'm waiting for half time so that he can take my place here and I can sit my butt down in front of that monster screen with pizza and beer."

"Colby, there is no beer. This is a mission."

"Root beer?"

"Cola stuff."

"Any port in a storm."

Don felt better as he ambled purposefully away from his brother and Colby, felt his nerves settling back into the grooves where they belonged. The mission was moving ahead, and in the way that it was supposed to. The consultant was working hard on the project and, from what Charlie had said last night, would possibly be done in record time. His men were on duty, and there was no evidence of anything sneaky going on despite what his overactive imagination was trying to tell him. There were times when paranoia simply got in the way, and this was turning out to be one of them.

Private Riley was guarding the front door, his rifle held casually across his lap. He waved at Don well before the FBI agent was close enough to talk without their voices echoing through the cavernous corridors. "Agent Eppes. Saw you from a mile away."

"These corridors aren't quite that long," Don told him. "How's it looking outside?"

"Cold," Riley said with a grimace and a glance out through the window of the thick door. "Sure glad you folks don't want us to do any perimeter checks out there. Gonna snow something fierce tonight."

Don looked outside. The sky was a crystal clear blue, with not a cloud in sight. "Really?"

"Well…it's sure cold." Riley grinned. "What'd'ya expect from a southern boy?"

Don chuckled. "Keep an eye out. Let me know if anyone or anything comes near."

"You got it, Special Agent Eppes. Hey, the Rams just scored a touchdown! A twenty three yard pass and a forty yard run! Whoo-ee!" He grinned, a hand to his ear piece.

Don chuckled again. "Keep an eye out, soldier. Your relief will be here soon."

"Yes, sir! Go, Rams!"

That fifty dollars was looking more and more like a sure thing in Don's pocket, and he could imagine Lt. Bakker grinding his teeth over this last play. Don chuckled again to himself, feeling better, heading toward the back door to check on the guard there.

His good mood evaporated as soon as he spotted the guard: Schmidt. The man was leaning nonchalantly against the door, splitting his attention between watching Don approach along the corridor and peering out into the forest behind the back door. His face looked ruddy, as if he had just come in from the cold, and there was a small puddle of melted water by his feet.

Schmidt gave a casual salute. "Agent Eppes."

"Corporal," Don returned, keeping his feelings damped down. _No proof, Eppes. Megan's still looking at things. You have nothing but your paranoia to go on_. But his spidey sense was sending out danger signals and screaming at him, and Don was finding it hard to ignore.

_All right, Eppes, time to earn your underwhelming salary. Your gut is telling you something, now it's up to you to figure out what_. Don deliberately relaxed his stance, working for 'ambling' on his advance to the back door that Schmidt was guarding.

It was hard to believe that the man already had a couple of tours in the Middle East under his belt. His face looked like what Megan's records said he was: twenty one, and well on his way to dying on the streets if the Army hadn't pulled him out of his particular gutter and turned him into something useful. The experience had clearly done the man good because he wasn't one of those twenty-something's that Don routinely saw on the campus of CalSci, the ones with their brains in the sky and their noses in the air thinking that the world owed them something just for deigning to breathe the air around them. This was a man with intelligence behind those non-descript brown eyes. Schmidt tried to hide it, tried to scuttle behind a façade of a street kid toughened by a few years in the Army in unfriendly territory, but wasn't quite successful. Don knew it as surely as he knew his own name.

Okay, established: Schmidt was more than he seemed. And that made him dangerous. There were whipcord muscles covered by the long sleeves of his fatigues and the calluses on his palms were roughened by years of use, more than a tour in the Middle East would put onto his skin. What was Schmidt doing here on this mission? 'Simple guard detail' didn't seem to be enough. Whose side was he on?

Casual. Don could do casual. "Hey," he greeted the soldier, lifting his hand in a general motion that could have been anything from a wave to an attempt at a salute. "How's it looking?"

"Quiet," Schmidt responded, giving an impromptu glance over his shoulder to make sure that the cold landscape outside the door hadn't suddenly turned on him and made him into a liar. He stiffened with a small smile, and put his hand to his ear. "The Dolphins are on the Rams' three yard line, sir."

"Tell the Rams to get their asses moving. I've got a bet with your lieutenant."

"No, sir. Riley and me've got twenty bucks going down, and it's me for the fishes."

"Thought you were an Eagles fan, Schmidt."

"Got that right. Eagles are gonna run right over the Dolphins. The Rams they'll have more trouble with."

Don grinned, though he had to force it to the surface to look real. "Hear you." He glanced outside again, noting the cold frost along the edges of the window. "It's getting cold out there."

"Too cold for me," Schmidt agreed. "Better to stay inside, where it's warm. Can't wait for my relief, so I can get in front of the big screen. How is it?"

"Definitely worth watching," Don told him. "Big enough to count the stitches on the ball. And I've got to give the NSA credit; the munchies they're getting for us are making this gig worthwhile."

Schmidt nodded. "Better'n army grub."

_Can I find a way to shake something loose? _Don considered. "Nothing outside? No moose, no wolves?"

Schmidt shrugged. It looked awesomely casual, but Don still got the feeling that something wasn't quite right. "Might have seen a wolf in the brush, but not clearly. Wasn't any person. I let it go. Couple of rabbits, that's probably what anything walking around outside would be after."

Don took a last look through the window, wishing that there were something he could point at. "Guess I'm just antsy over this."

"Guess you are, sir. This is a cakewalk assignment." And, idly, "when do you think it'll be finished?"

_Zing!_ Don allowed himself to grimace. "Not for a while. Charlie says this is one tough code. Maybe a week," he lied, "possibly even two."

"Sounds good to me," Schmidt allowed. "A little simple guard duty, make sure the weasels stay out there in the leaves, and three gourmet squares a day. I can live with this. You tell the professor to take his time. I won't mind."

Don winked. "I'll tell him you said that." _Not!_

It took all of Don's willpower not to slam the man up against the concrete wall. There was something going on, something that Don could sense. Schmidt was more than he seemed, and was taking pains to appear normal. What the hell was it?

Still, there wasn't any solid evidence, nothing to point to Schmidt as being dirty. Don's nose for trouble wasn't enough to pin anything on the man. All Don could do was watch and wait. And fume.

No, maybe not. There needed to be more that Don could do; after all, this was a top secret and highly classified mission. If there was someone that Don was leery of, then he didn't need proof to take action. This wasn't a case where Don needed to get evidence to lay before a judge. Don needed to keep the consultant safe so that the consultant could complete the assigned task, and that meant taking a long and hard look at whatever and whoever tickled Don's subconscious.

Step one: he sought out Lt. Bakker. He pulled the man just outside of the conference room where the rest of Bakker's men, along with David and the NSA agent Foster, were cheering for their favorites.

Bakker wasn't fooled. He jammed the rest of the pizza crust into his mouth and swallowed hard. "I take it that you aren't here to call off our little wager, Special Agent Eppes."

"Not with the Rams up by seven, I'm not." Don swung right into his main topic. There was only thirty seconds to half-time, and Don needed to get this out before the changing of the guard. "How well do you know Schmidt?"

"Corporal Schmidt?" Bakker was taken aback. "Pretty well, I'd say. Been with me for the last six months or so. Attached to the ten forty six before that, I think. I'd have to look up his records to be sure. Why?"

"Good man?"

"Never had any complaints. Liked by his buddies, does his job, goes home at night with his skin intact. No troubles. Why?"

"Has Schmidt been one of the men who went over to the resort to pick up our food?" Don persisted.

"Yup. Think he did it last night. You got something to say, Special Agent Eppes?"

"So he's had contact with the outside world." Don frowned.

"I don't think I like where you're going with this, Eppes. What's got yer feathers riled?"

"I have to be honest with you, lieutenant: nothing that I can put my fingers on. But I'm getting this funny feeling." Don came to a decision. "I don't want him left on guard duty alone after this. I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill—"

"—but considerin' that we're sittin' under a mountain right now," and Bakker's drawl grew more pronounced, "I take yer point, Agent Eppes. I'll not assign him anywhere close to where yer brother is doin' his work. You want me to rotate 'im out of here? Sit the rest of the mission out someplace else?"

"Worst thing we could do," Don said. "We move him out, he'll know that his cover's been blown and he'll tell his people. That'll precipitate whatever's going down. I think our best bet is to keep everything under wraps until Charlie's finished decoding that thing and then pack up in a hurry."

"He anywhere close to finishin'?"

Paranoia reared its ugly head. Don wanted to believe his gut, wanted to think that this earnest young lieutenant in front of him was a fine and upstanding American officer. But—this was national security. And Charlie's life could be at stake, not to mention whoever would be involved with the results of Charlie's work. Don plastered a sad smile on his face. "Don't I wish. Then we could leave this place behind and get back to some real work instead of babysitting."

He felt a presence behind him, turned to find NSA Agent Foster moving in on them. The man was all business, the football game forgotten. "Eppes? What's wrong?"

Don shook his head. "Wish I knew. I think I'm just being paranoid. You see anything?"

Foster shook his head. "No." He looked around; it was an automatic gesture from a trained agent on the job. There wasn't anything to see, and Foster was reassuring himself of that fact. Don's paranoia was contagious. "Maybe I'll join your man in the computer room with Dr. Eppes. How close is he to finishing?"

With Bakker standing next to them, Don could only repeat the lie. "If he's close, then I'm crazy. When he's close to an answer, he usually gets really verbal. Starts wanting to tell everybody about it. Right now he's not talking."

Foster looked back longingly at the huge screen, watching as the tight end let the ball slip through his fingers and bounce away into the end zone. And he looked at the chairs in the conference room, far more comfortably upholstered than the straight-backed jobs in the workroom where Charlie was hard at work. He sighed. "Keep me posted on the game. I put into the pool with the army boys. I have the Dolphins to win with a seven point spread."

* * *

"Don." There was relief on Charlie's face at seeing his brother, David and Foster in tow, but not much. It was half time, time for changing of the guard, not that Don had been waiting for that. Not after his little checking up excursion that failed to settle his nerves. No, Don wanted to see for himself that Charlie was safe and sound and working hard at his task. Charlie set his pencil down. "I need your help." 

"My help?" That was a surprise. Don was no slouch when it came to math, but there was a big difference between Freshman Calculus and Professor Eppes-style wizardry. "Charlie, you do realize—"

"Yes, yes, I do." Dr. Eppes was in full charge-ahead mode. "I've already applied the asymmetric algorithms that the initial shell required and went through the next two layers of perihedral asymptotes. The computer cut off a lot of time there, but it can't handle this next piece. I need you to get me information about a name."

Don blinked. At least he understood the last sentence. "A name? Muzawin? You already said it was about him."

Charlie was used to everyone being one or more steps behind him. "Right. I'm still having trouble pulling out the various pieces, and it's because part of this—the key parts—are names. I need you to find out whatever you can about someone by the name of Robert Winster, living in Newport Beach, Virginia."

"You've identified him as one of the suspects?" Foster asked immediately. "I'll contact headquarters, have him picked up."

"Hey, hey, wait a sec." Don held up his hand. "Hold up, Foster; we may want to just tail this guy, let him lead us to other people. Or he may be innocent, dragged into some scheme by Muzawin. What have you got on him, Charlie? What does that cipher thing say?"

Charlie shook his head. "That's just it, Don; I don't know. Not yet. I need the names and places that he's associated with, then I can use the Pfisterer Contiguity Theorem to assign probabilities to other words to arrive at—"

"Okay, okay, I get it." Don cut him off hastily. "I'll call Megan, get her on it." He looked around automatically; there was still no one else within earshot except for the three FBI agents and the NSA man. Colby had already stood up from the table and his still unread magazine, and David was prepared to take his place.

Foster also plopped himself down at the table that Colby had vacated with an _I'm staying right here_ expression. Charlie frowned. "Don?"

"It's okay, buddy. Just standard procedure." Damn, but Don was doing a lot of lying today. First Schmidt, then Bakker, and now his brother. Don strove to make it sound plausible. "We had a couple of hunters trespassing not too long ago—" _would you believe yesterday?_—"and we're still checking them out. It's nothing, but you know how it is. It's easier just to go along with the protocols than it is to make a fuss. You just keep doing your thing and get us out of here, okay buddy?"

Foster reached for the comm. link on the console. "I'll see what I can do to help, professor. I'll get my people to supply the data, keep you FBI guys from having to do the work. You're just looking for names, right?"

"Names, places, jobs." Charlie nodded. "Anything that might trigger an association. That will help me to decipher a few more pieces, which will lead to decoding the rest of the document. This is a tough one; words are relatively easy to figure out, but names and other things that could be anything are more difficult. That's why I need some additional information. Once I have that, I can finish this off." _And we can all go home and hide under the bed_, was the unspoken part that shone through the dark and haunted eyes.

Yeah, his brother was not taking this so well. Getting rousted from his happy and safe office at CalSci had gone over like a wet blanket in a thunderstorm. Once again Don wondered what was going on. _Too many loose ends, Eppes; too many loose ends_. Why hadn't Megan found any trace of the injured NSA agents? It wasn't as though Charlie had made up the story. Hell, Charlie couldn't lie to save his own life, let alone lie to Don. Don could see right through his kid brother and at the moment he could see that Charlie was slipping away, hanging onto his numbers like a man drowning in a raging sea with only his numerically-oriented life-saver to keep him afloat.

Forcing the man to take a break wouldn't help. No, the only thing that would help would be for Charlie to finish decoding the document and get him the hell away from here. Never mind that Don was enjoying the scent of pine and the crisp tang of mountain air. Charlie wasn't; Charlie was stuck inside where it was safe—_I hope!_—and surrounded by concrete and a mountain so that whoever it was back at CalSci couldn't take another shot at him.

Still, taking a break was a decent idea. "That sounds good, buddy. I'll have Megan work from the FBI angle, Foster here can have his people do some quiet checking, and we'll have those names and stuff for you as quick as we can. In the mean time, you want to take a few minutes off? Get some pizza? You look like you can use some down time."

But the computer interrupted, sending up a couple satisfied chirps. Charlie's attention was caught, a butterfly in a net. He drifted over to it. "Yes! It worked. That variation on the Pfisterer…" His voice trailed off, getting involved once again in his work. His shoulders straightened, the lines smoothed out of his face.

One corner of Don's mouth quirked upward. _Numbers are Charlie's security blanket_, he thought to himself. He beckoned to Colby. "C'mon, Colby. We've lost him again. He won't surface for another hour or two, and hopefully by then we'll have some more data for him to crunch. Let's leave these two on guard duty, and go grab some pizza."

"Bring me back a can of soda after the third quarter, okay guys?" David called after them.


	10. Cold 10 Numb3rs

Foster turned off the comm. link that he'd used to contact his own people. "Yes, sir. I've got it. I'll keep things quiet on this end. You got it." He turned it off and turned to David, keeping his voice down in deference to the high level thinking going on in the other end of the room. Computers were whirring at full speed, trying to keep up with the mathematician. "I've got the list of names that Dr. Eppes wanted. It's a long one."

David took the list from him. Nothing jumped out at him, no name that David recognized. There was at least a dozen names there, mostly men but a couple of women as well. Some had connections to the legislative branch, jobs working for senators, and a few law clerks attached to federal judges, but most simply seemed to live in the area and would thus be appropriate people for Robert Winster to know by location alone. Neighbors, and such. Winster was apparently self-employed, a computer type with a small but devoted following. There wasn't any indication of what particular area of computer-izing that he dabbled in, but Charlie hadn't asked for that. Charlie had asked for names and places, and Foster had gotten them for him. David took it to Charlie.

Charlie scanned the list. "Yeah. Yeah, this is what I need. I'll be able to cross-reference these…" His voice trailed off, already lost in thought.

David shook his head, amazed at the work going on inside that dark head. _Faster than a speeding computer_, he thought wryly. _More powerful than a…_ he couldn't think of a good comparison, nothing that would suit his dour mood, and certainly nothing that would fit.

Foster handed him an open can of soda. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," David affirmed. "He won't come up for air for another hour at least."

Foster grinned. "And you work with him all the time?"

David took a sip. "Not all the time. Just on the cases where Charlie's numbers will help solve the case. He's got a regular job, remember."

"Yeah." Foster himself took a swig. "You think he's going to be able to pull a rabbit out the hat on this one? My bosses back in D.C. seemed pretty frazzled. You know what's going on?"

David showed even white teeth in a grin. "Guy, I know even less than you do."

* * *

"Got it. Thanks, Megan." Don finished copying down the list of names and places that she'd read off to him. The chair he was sitting in, in front of the communications console, was worn but still comfortable. None of the stuffing was leaking out, despite the best efforts of the mice who had sneaked in over the years of neglect. "You sure about this? These are some pretty powerful names. And you popped it out pretty fast." Two chairs over, the army grunt's eyes were widening as he listened to half of the conversation. 

"That was the same question I had for our D.C. office, Don." Megan sounded troubled. "This Winster guy that Charlie named seems to have his fingers in a lot of pies. The agent on duty was able to rattle off these names and places at a moment's notice. Winster seems to be handing out goodies to a lot of people in very influential places. And, not for the record or any other recorded piece of data, D.C. let me know that they've gotten their own hands slapped more than once for asking questions about those influential people as well as our Mr. Winster."

Yeah, Don never liked that gut-stabbed feeling that he got at times like this. Quick glance at the private. "_How_ influential, Megan? Are we talking more than just what's on this list?"

"That's just the thing. Nobody knows. The executive branch of government, mostly."

"Which is unfortunate, because we happen to be part of that branch of government." Don thought furiously.

Which was when he heard a soft _click_. Then another _click_. And it was only in his ear piece, not anything in the surrounding area, nothing like hard metal expanding and contracting in response to the cold outside. The _click_ sounded electronic, and close.

"Megan?"

"Yes, Don?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Another gut stab, this time with a pick made of ice. Then, carefully: "I guess it was nothing." Damn, but he was doing a lot of lying today. Don one-handedly folded the paper onto which he'd copied down the names that Megan had given him, the other hand used to hold the phone to his ear. He was not about to let Bakker's man see what was on this list. "Listen, thanks for info. I'll give it to Charlie in a little while. It might help, but it's probably a long shot. He's pretty busy right now. This code thing is a tough one, he says. It may be a week or more before he can even tease the if's, and's, and but's out of it. Maybe I can get this list to him then."

"Don?" Megan was confused. Don didn't blame her one bit; all of his previous conversations had been dedicated to concepts such as 'urgent' and 'Charlie's making swift progress'.

"Yeah." Don thought swiftly. He really didn't like the direction that this whole case was moving. "By the way, how was dinner last night? You know, with Dad and Amita?" _Get the message, get the message, get the message!_

"Great." More confusion, that was plain. "It was a really nice place that Charlie picked out. Amita wants to go there again, once Charlie's back."

"That's good." Deep breath. "Any plans for a follow up? Maybe you should ask my Dad to make some of his world-class lasagna. You know that I'd go to the ends of the earth to have some of that. _Anybody_ would do _anything_ to get some of that lasagna." If there was ever a time that Don wanted telepathy to work, it was _now_.

Silence. Then: "yes, I think that would be a very good idea, Don. Some of your father's lasagna sounds very good. I'll suggest that to him, and I'll see if Amita can join us."

"Wish I could be there with you, Megan." And: "how about Larry? Think he can join you, too?"

"Why, yes, I think he will. I don't see how he could possibly turn down an invitation like this. Not for your father's lasagna."

"Great. Save a plate for me. I'll talk with you again; call me if you pick up any more tidbits." Don made himself sound bored.

Bless the woman! Message sent and received: get Charlie's loved ones into a safe house. With names this powerful and a situation this grave, there was a very real possibility that anyone close to Charlie would be at risk. And, with names like these on a list like Megan had just given him, Don was certain that the safe house would not be one on the approved FBI list where anyone connected with the department could find them.

What the hell was going on? Those 'clicks' that Don had heard had a high probability of originating from an electronic bug. Who the hell was listening in on a conversation that ought to be scrambled with the very best scramblers from the NSA? Don was very _very _certain that matters had gone way above his head, and that somebody—probably Don himself, not to mention a whole team of FBI types—was in a boatload of trouble. Who were the major players in this game? There had to be some whoppers.

First off, there had to be someone with enough clout to sub-let this mountain from the armed forces. That in itself argued for a lot of political muscle. Then there was whoever was lined up against them. This Winster character was just a go-between; of that Don was certain. Don again opened the paper that he'd copied the names onto, keeping it from the private sitting next to him, recognizing entirely too many of those names: a defense contracting firm. Several CEO's of those defense contractors. A private military outfit, charged with providing soldiers for hire in unfriendly territories and getting paid a hell of a lot of money.

Don saw several other names that he knew, names from reading both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Times, names that figured in the back paragraphs of the news to support the diatribes of the various un-elected government officials. Most of those names belonged to the executive branch, but here and there were a couple attached to both Houses of Congress and a few connected to the judicial branch. Crap, did that one go all the way to a clerk inside the Supreme Court?

Not happy. Not happy at all.

Crap again. What had D'Angelo said? That the FBI had control over this operation? _Thanks, boss! I'm in a good position to get my ass kicked and my head blown off. Real sucker, here._

The private looked at him, his attention completely off the various screens that showed the wilderness around the mountain bunker. "Sir?"

The kid—Mason, by his name tag—looked young and scared. Couldn't be more than eighteen, nineteen at most, Don thought, remembering that Megan's rushed research had brought up a nice but average high school record with signing up with the military as a way to get ahead. Pretty standard for a kid coming from a low income background and not a tremendous amount of smarts to get a scholarship.

"Keep your eyes on those screens," Don admonished him. "See anything?"

"No, sir. Everything's quiet."

"Good. I want to know the second you spot anything, even if it looks like something as harmless as a moose."

"Sir?"

But Don moved on to other things. He tapped the internal comm.link. "Colby?"

"Rams are down by a field goal, boss. Two minute warning for the end of the third quarter."

"Get up here now, Colby."

"On it." No arguments. No smart remarks. Just the brief sound of a chair getting kicked back before Colby broke the signal.

But when he arrived, he was not alone. Lt. Bakker had followed him at a run.

"Don?"

Don kept the paper folded. "We're going to high alert, gentlemen. Colby, take this paper down to Charlie, make sure that David knows not to leave him alone even in the john. Got it?"

"Right. Then?" Colby accepted the folded paper.

"Then start making rounds of the facility, Colby."

"What am I looking for?"

"Anything that looks out of place. Call in every ten minutes. No exceptions."

"On it." Colby was gone.

Lt. Bakker's gaze followed the younger agent until he rounded the corner and was out of sight. There was no amusement in his demeanor. "What's going on, Eppes?"

"Wish I knew, lieutenant. This is getting bigger and bigger."

"Fill me in."

Don pursed his lips. "I'm thinking that that is not a good idea, lieutenant."

Bakker scowled. "Really?"

Don met him, stare for stare. "Really. Just understand that this is big—_really_ big—and that there is a very good chance that something is going to go down in the next few hours. Right now I want to keep things as cool as possible, get Charlie finished with his stuff, and get out of here if at all possible. Understand?"

"Ah don't like working in a vacuum, Agent Eppes."

"Neither do I, Lt. Bakker, and right now I have very little more intel than you do. Just take my word for this: what you don't know, you can't be held accountable for. Get my drift?"

Another scowl. "You want me to call for another platoon to come help us out?"

_Yes! Yes!_ Don sighed grimly. "Manpower is not what we need. Getting Charlie finished faster is the goal. And if you or I could help him do that, we'd be teaching his next class at CalSci."

* * *

Colby didn't dawdle getting to the computer room where Charlie was working. Despite moving swiftly, he keep his eyes darting back and forth, looking for anything out of the ordinary. 

There wasn't anything, not anything that could be seen with a quick once-over. There weren't any abandoned packages, nothing tied to a pipe and ticking. Just miles and miles of paint-daubed concrete in the latest shade of puke.

Both David and Foster saw him coming; Colby hadn't made any attempt to approach unseen. Foster folded his large frame into the chair as Colby entered. David was already sitting down. He yawned.

Colby kept his voice down. "Megan came through. Got the list for Charlie."

"Anything interesting on it?" Foster held out his hand.

"You could say that." Colby handed it to David so that his fellow agent could see. Foster looked over his shoulder.

David read through it swiftly, read through it once more to make certain that he was seeing what he was seeing. The sleepies disappeared. "Is Megan serious with this? This guy Winster has these connections?"

"That's what she told Don." Colby took it back. "Charlie, Don's got the list you asked for."

"Put it over there." Charlie waved his arm in the general direction of the table where his own pizza and can of soda sat untouched. "I'm already working on a list."

"Foster got it for him," David told Colby. "Looks like the NSA was faster than we were. Charlie's been working on it for the last half hour." He yawned again and stretched. "The game?"

"The game?" Colby had forgotten about it. "Oh. Right. Last I knew, Dolphins were still up by a field goal."

"Nope." Foster still kept his voice down, his hand to the earpiece, listening to the play by play from the soldiers in the conference room watching the game, the men unaware of the crisis brewing. "Now they're down by two field goals. They blew the pass—receiver fumbled it—and the Rams were able to run it through the middle and over the pile up. But there's still a lot of time left in the fourth quarter."

David yawned again. "Damn, I can't stop yawning. Need better air circulation in this joint." He tossed a glance in Charlie's direction. "Wish he'd hurry up and finish. How can he keep going like this?"

"You were up half the night," Colby reminded him. "Listen, why don't you take a hike around the facility for me? Don wants us to look for anything out of the ordinary, and you can wake yourself up with a little exercise. I'll let him know that we've switched assignments for a bit."

David hoisted himself out of the chair with an effort. "Thanks, I'll do that." He yawned again. "Good thing we don't have any beer for the game. I'd be out cold, man." He took a last swig on his soda can before tossing it into the trash. "I'll be back in a few."

"Touch base with Don every ten minutes," Colby warned, "or he'll be after you with a squad of army types."

* * *

Don switched screens to another view of the concrete interior, looking for anything that hadn't been there before. There was nothing, there was no one moving anywhere with the exception of David meandering down Corridor C, poking his nose into this doorway and that. The only noise in the control room where he sat was the background murmuring that Private Mason was still piping in, letting him know that the game was winding to a close and that so far Special Agent Don Eppes was out fifty bucks. Sorry to say it, but at the moment Don didn't care. The Rams could be down by twenty one points, and Don would still have his attention glued to the screens. 

He wasn't the only one. Lt. Bakker was also scanning the screens as if his life depended on it—_might, dude!_—searching the wilderness around them, hunting for signs of intelligent life. Every so often he'd send a grim look toward Don, clearly wanting to know more about what he was up against and also knowing that the answer would not be forthcoming. It didn't make him any happier.

"Hey, lootenant?" The private was staring at his own camera screen.

"Yes, Mason?" That was from Bakker, although Don too came alive with a squirt of adrenalin.

"Lootenant, I got some tracks here, in the mud. On camera three, out toward the north face." Mason swung the screen around so that both Bakker and Don could see. "Boot tracks, lootenant."

"You see anyone out there?" Bakker beat Don to the question.

"No, sir. Not a soul."

"How far can you see those tracks?" Don wanted to know.

"They're heading up toward the Canadian border—"

"That's tracing them backwards. Where are they now? Move forward, south, toward our back door. Where are they now?" Don repeated, stuffing his anxiety into the little corner of his brain where he always put it when it was getting in his way.

Mason toggled the controls. "Can't tell, sir. They've gone out of camera range."

"Switch cameras," Bakker ordered. "Here, Ah got it." He flipped the signal onto his own screen, easier for Don to look over his shoulder. "Tracking. More prints. Switching to Camera Four; damn, they're in a blind spot. If they're there at all."

"They're there," Don replied grimly. "Find them."

"Could it be that hunting party from yesterday? Maybe we didn't run 'em off far enough."

"Could be. Could be that they weren't a hunting party."

"Could be that they weren't huntin' bear," Bakker corrected. The drawl was coming back thick and strong, joining the man's own personal sense of paranoia. "Could be that they were huntin' somethin' a mite more personal, like yours and my hides, and the hide of that genius-type kid brother of yours." He hunched over the camera controls. "Let's jes' see if Ah kin locate you varmints." He tossed a glance over his shoulder. "Private Mason, why don' you whistle up a couple of the boys an' have 'em hang out by the back door, jus' to be on the safe side?"

Don regretted not being able to tell this young lieutenant the whole story. His gut was insisting that the man was one of the good guys. But he couldn't afford to be wrong, and that demanded that he ignore his gut, at least for the moment. "You still have Schmidt guarding the front entrance?"

"Nope. Private Papadakionis relieved him at half time. McNeil took Riley's place. Both of them boys oughta be cheering on them Dolphins right about now."

"Good." Don didn't want Schmidt anywhere close to any of the action. "Switch to Camera Six. Let's see if we can pick up the trail, maybe give your men something to work with. As soon as we find them, let's send out a party for a meet and greet." He opened up the comm. link, setting up the secure connection that would allow him to speak to Megan Reeves in L.A.

It wasn't Megan who answered his call.

"D'Angelo."

"Sir?" Don immediately got more nervous. Why was the Area Director taking this call personally? "Everything all right back there?" _Did Megan get everyone to a safe house?_

"Glad you called in, Eppes."

"Yes, sir. Where's Reeves?"

"Sorry, Eppes." D'Angelo kept his voice awesomely casual. "I had to re-assign her to another case, something a little more pressing. She'll be out of town for a little while."

"Yes, sir." On a Sunday afternoon, Megan Reeves got suddenly re-assigned, from a case of this importance? Clearly there was something going on back in L.A. as well as right here under this mountain and Don was damn sure that there was a connection with what was going on under this mountain. It took all of Don's ironclad control not to demand answers. Chances for this 'secure' line to be tapped were getting higher and higher. _You may be paranoid, Eppes, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you_.

"In the meantime, I'll be your contact," D'Angelo continued blithely, "which means none of your usual horseplay, Eppes. Keep it strictly business. Oh, and your father asked me to pass on that you were absolutely right about that circuit breaker. It blew out and caused a bit of damage. Nothing that a good scrubbing won't fix but it did take everyone by surprise. I understand that the lasagna is staying in the freezer until you get home."

"Yes, sir." Woodenly. Don hoped that he was correctly interpreting everything that his boss was saying: Megan had taken all three civilians into protective custody, and that someone had tried to grab his father. He hoped that the someone had received a great deal of damage from that attempt and was now very sorry to have tried it.

Nothing Don could do about it from a thousand miles away. He had his own troubles. _Won't stop me from worrying_. And: _better not tell Charlie. Not yet_.

"Who knows how many rooms in that house that circuit breaker controlled?" D'Angelo asked idly. "It wouldn't surprise me to find out that it hit an outlet or two in most of the rooms. It's going to take a while to trace them all back to the source."

_Shit. Shit, shit, shit. D'Angelo is telling me that there are a lot of players in this game. Trust no one. What is this, a TV show?_

"Yes, sir." Don hoped that his voice wasn't shaking. It probably wasn't; Don had a good poker face. Learned it from the best, a man who was now in hiding because of both of his sons. "Yes, sir, I understand. I'll take care of things on this end."

"You do that, Eppes. Let it take as long as it needs to, hear me? Two weeks or more wouldn't surprise me. And keep in touch."

Don sat back, suddenly very tired—and very worried. It wasn't just what was going on here in this bunker. There were tentacles everywhere, siphoning off information and putting Don and his people in danger at every turn. D'Angelo, with his reference to a long time, was telling Don to wrap this up quick. He was telling Don that the longer this played out, the greater the chance was for something to go wrong, and they both knew that Don didn't have that part under control. This was Charlie's game to win or lose, for he was the one with the math noggin playing with code. This mission would end when Charlie deciphered the code, and not before. Don really longed to be back in L.A., where he knew what the crime was and who he should be going after. This trying to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad was getting real old, real fast.


	11. Cold 11 Numb3rs

Foster leaned back in his chair and kept his voice down. "He keeps on going like this? He's been at this, what, six hours straight and that's today alone? Does he ever take a break?" He looked over at Colby. "Damn, he hasn't even gone for any of those high class munchies they toted in for us."

Colby grinned, slouched further in his chair. "Yeah, that's Charlie. The price of being a genius, dude: your brain never stops like normal people. Just wait 'til he starts talking about it. Guy has a gift for getting you to understand stuff you never heard of." He watched the subject of their discussion. Charlie darted from the computer bank to a smaller laptop, transferring some piece of data from one to the other. He ran his hands through his hair, grabbing onto some of the curls and pulling as if he could simply pull the answer directly out of his brain.

It worked. Something clicked, one neuron to the other, and Charlie was at it again. He grabbed the paper with the names on it that Foster had given him, rejected it, grabbed the copy that Colby had brought from Don, and started keyboarding once again, muttering to himself in annoyance that his fingers couldn't keep up with his thoughts. Some of the data went into the laptop, and more went into the DOD computer which was valiantly whirring away, trying to keep up with its current master and having a hard time of it.

Something popped up on the computer screen in front of Charlie. He frowned, tapped in a command. Same wrong answer came back. He cocked his head, puzzled, and snatched up the papers that he'd received from Foster and Colby, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Colby could almost read Charlie's thoughts: had the mathematician inputted the wrong name? Wrong spelling?

No. There were all the names, correctly spelled—amazingly enough, given Charlie's predilection for ignoring any and all rules regarding the English language and various facsimiles—yet the program was returning gibberish. Which meant that something was off. It was probably the decision tree that Charlie had instructed the computers to use, but still…

More neurons fired off in sequential order. "Colby?"

Colby wrenched his attention back from the empty corridor, not that it took much effort. But Colby had been taught to watch the surrounding territory for trouble, not watch his assignment perform his job. People that he'd been assigned to protect didn't usually come at him with guns and knives. Sneaky types in dark corridors did. "Yes, Charlie?"

Charlie was peering at the two papers in his hands, looking at first one, then the other. He glanced up at the two men in the room: Colby and Foster. Puzzlement was clear.

"Dr. Eppes?" Foster half rose from his seat.

Charlie stopped. A thought struck him, delicately, like a tidal wave. Worry became the overriding emotion. He turned away, back to his computer. "Never mind." He hunched over the keyboard.

Foster started to go after him, to find out what was troubling the focal point of the mission. "Dr. Eppes—"

Colby held him back. "Hold up, dude. He'll talk when he's ready."

"He's—"

"Nope." Colby shook his head. "You've just witnessed genius at work. He'll talk when he's ready, and he's not ready yet."

Foster sighed. "This waiting is getting to me." He glanced at the table with the cold pizza and the drinks. All but one drink had been polished off, and that drink was Charlie's. "I'm going to head back to the game room, pick up some of those wings. You want anything?"

"If they've got any of those mushroom things left, bring me some," Colby told him. "I'll hold down the fort here. Bring some drinks, too. This place is drier than the deserts of Saudi Arabia."

Foster grinned. "You been there?"

"Yeah, for about a week. Staging area, got shipped out to Afghanistan after that. You?"

"Nope. Been chasing terrorists right here in the good ole U.S. of A. Sometimes I think that D.C.'s got the highest per capita number of 'em and that includes their compound outside of Islamabad."

Colby chuckled. "Better you than me, guy." He watched Foster amble down the corridor toward the main conference room where soldiers were cheering not only for their football team of choice but for the afore-mentioned munchies. Foster turned the corner and vanished from Colby's line of sight.

Colby wasted no time. "Charlie? What's up, dude?"

Charlie whipped around, fear evident. "He's gone?"

"Out of sight, out of mind," Colby reassured him. "What have you got? What's with Foster? Have you decoded that thing? Is that what you don't want Foster to know yet?"

"The code?" Charlie was momentarily confused. "No, not yet. But, Colby, the names are different."

It was Colby's turn to be confused. "What names, Charlie? Back up. Spell it out for me, in words of one syllable."

Charlie made a valiant effort to re-organize his thoughts. "The lists. The list that I got from Agent Foster, and the list that you gave me from Don. They don't match."

"Okay," Colby drawled. He still couldn't see where Charlie was going, why he was so upset. "The lists came from different sources. The names shouldn't match."

"Not completely, no. But, Colby, these two lists don't match at all! They have _nothing_ in common; not one name is identical. Colby, that is statistically almost impossible! There ought to be at least a few names that are the same!"

Colby, admittedly, was not into math, but even he could appreciate the significance of what Charlie was saying. "You mean that one of these lists is a fake, to throw you off the trail."

"More than that." Charlie was definite. "The list that Foster gave me is no good. The names on Foster's list simply don't fit into the cipher algorithm. When I switched to the list that Don got, everything fell into place. I'll have this code key deciphered as soon as the computers spit out the final piece."

"You've deciphered it?" Colby wanted to make certain that he understood. "Even though one of the lists is a fake, you still cracked the code?"

"Almost," Charlie corrected. "There's still the final key, which is what I'm working on right now. But, Colby, the list that Foster gave me was a total fabrication!"

Now they had moved into Colby's territory. "Which means that either Foster is the NSA mole, or that whoever fed him the list is the mole. Either way, we've got the NSA's ass right where we want it." He forced a smile that did not bode well for renegade NSA agents. "Nice work, Charlie. Let's tell Don."

* * *

"Lootenant!" Private Mason's voice almost cracked. He set down the communications mike. "Lootenant! They can't get out!" 

"Who can't get out, private?" Bakker, already with nerves on edge, snapped around to face his man.

"The men, sir! They're trapped in the conference room, where the TV is! They can't get out!"

It could be a coincidence—_not_. The fact that Don and his team were guarding a highly regarded consultant in the performance of his duties in a concrete bunker dug into a mountainside with the majority of their army side-kicks imprisoned in a conference room without their weapons couldn't _possibly_ mean that something vile was currently being flung into the fan at a velocity approaching light speed. Don slapped his own intercom. "David. You there?"

Silence.

"Sinclair!" Don rapped out. "Sinclair! Come in!"

"Don…?"

"David, we've got trouble!" Don found the camera that focused on the FBI agent who had been assigned the interior checks.

Something was wrong. David was leaning against the cinderblock wall, hanging onto a stray water pipe to keep from falling over. Even in the false colors of the camera picture, his face looked ashen.

Under normal circumstances, Special Agent Eppes would have inquired as to the health of Special Agent Sinclair, if he were coming down with the flu, and if he wished to take the rest of the day off to recover so that he could continue to perform his duties on the following day in better spirits.

"Don…"

These were not normal circumstances, and Don's paranoia received an exponentially rapid boost. "Stay where you are," he snapped. "I'm coming to get you. Bakker, have your man get the rest of your people out and split them between the entrances. Stay in touch from the intercom, and monitor outside—"

Colby broke in through the comm. link. "Don! Don! Come down to Charlie's conference room now! You need to hear this!"

"What is it, Colby?" Don whipped around to face the comm.

"Not over the comm., Don." Ominous.

_Crap_. Too many things happening at once. It was going down, and it was going down hard, and it was going down _now_. Don knew it as surely as he knew his own name.

By the look of him, Lt. Bakker knew the same thing. Figuring out who won their little football wager was going to have to wait until they were both certain that they were alive to honor the bet.

The lieutenant was no fool. This was an FBI mission, so Don was in charge. No arguing over chain of command. Lt. Bakker looked to Don for orders.

Don issued them. "Have Private Mason go and get your people out and at the perimeter _pronto_. Split 'em between the two entrances but go heavy on the back door because chances are that that's the way those hunters outside are going to try to come in. Shoot to kill, private. That's what they'll be doing."

"Let them fire the first shot, Mason," Bakker warned. "Rules of engagement."

Don agreed. "Just don't take any chances. Try to warn them off, and don't take no for an answer. Shoot on my authority. Bakker, you monitor the operation from here. I want to know everything as it's going down. I'm going after Sinclair." He tapped open the comm. link to Charlie's workplace. "Colby, have Foster go to the conference room at a run and help break out the army boys. They're trapped. We have movement outside—I need those soldiers armed and ready to shoot. Got it, Colby?"

"Don, Foster isn't here!"

"Why the hell not?" Even as he spoke, Don knew the answer. There were too many loose ends, too many things happening at once for any of this to be a coincidence.

Icy precision set in. No time for emotion; it would only cloud his judgment. First priority: protect the consultant and his work, never mind that it was his brother. Clearly whatever was in the documents Charlie was working on was too sensitive for several somebodies, and at least one or more of those somebodies knew exactly where the mathematician was located. "Colby: get Charlie out of there now! Take him and his work, and get him away from there."

"Where do you want him, Don?"

"Don't tell me over this channel," Don warned. "Don't trust communications. Just move, Colby!"

"On it." The link snapped off curtly, and Don blessed the man. Colby could take orders as well or better than any of the soldiers here under this mountain. Don turned to Bakker. "Stay here," he ordered. "Man the comm., and watch the cameras. Keep me informed of what's going down. I'm going after Foster, see just which side he's on. In the meantime, I want your men armed and at the entrances because I think that those footprints Mason saw belong to someone trying to get in by force."

"Ah agree with you, Special Agent Eppes." There was no humor in Bakker's voice. He glanced over at his soldier. "You heard the man, private. Git everybody's tail over to the doors and don't let anybody in without an invitation signed by Agent Eppes. Git!"

"Yes, sir!" Mason hustled.

Don appreciated the support like never before. "I'm going after Sinclair. Then Foster."

"Not yer brother?"

"I trust Granger." He did. He trusted the man with a linebacker's build to pull his geek brother out of the hole that the NSA had dug for the mathematician, trusted Granger to keep Charlie safe until Don himself could get there. There wasn't a better option. If Don went after Charlie first, he'd be throwing away whatever advantage he could get by figuring just whose side Foster was on.

Don hated delegating. Under these circumstances, he had no choice.

* * *

"C'mon." Colby grabbed Charlie by the arm. "We're outta here." 

"What?" Charlie resisted.

"Now, man!" Colby tugged a little harder.

"Colby, wait! I've got to shut the computer down." Charlie pulled away. "I could lose some of the data—"

"Better than losing your head." The next tug was irresistible.

"Okay! Okay!" Charlie snatched up his laptop, the power cord ripping from it and hanging forlornly from the outlet built into the table top. Charlie one-handedly pushed the buttons that told the little machine to turn itself off, the machine objecting in no uncertain terms with beeps that would do R2D2 proud that shutting down at this moment in time was a disgracefully poor use of computing power and couldn't it have just one more minute to play? Charlie sympathized; he too needed another minute of computing time.

Colby dashed off a glance to either side of the corridor: empty. Not necessarily safe, but empty. Mentally crossing his fingers, he dragged Charlie off to the right, hoping that he was making the right choice, that there wasn't going to be a mob of assassins coming at them, all intent on having mathematician meatloaf for dinner tonight. He listened, trying to hear anything that didn't belong.

Nothing. Only the normal clicks and pings of the metal inside this great mountain bunker, expanding and contracting in response to the heating and cooling of the various pipes and equipment. No sound of footsteps. Colby blessed his stars and prayed for more luck.

"This way," he whispered, his hand on Charlie's arm to ensure that the message got through.

"Colby, what's going on—"

"Sh." Colby listened some more. What was that? An overactive imagination, or something approaching? Colby couldn't tell.

Needed to move. Needed to get away from this area. Colby had to assume that they—whoever they were—knew where Charlie was working, what conference room he had been in, would know exactly where to go to murder him. Colby needed to get Charlie out of there, to somewhere that assassins wouldn't think to go.

Step one: leave. So they left. Fast.

* * *

Don raced down the corridors of the mountain bunker, blessing the cardio workouts that he'd been subjecting himself to lately. Weight-lifting was great, but nothing like a couple of five kay runs and a healthy dose of fear to lend wings to his feet. The concrete cinder blocks flew by, the over-hanging pipes a blue blur in his view. 

Lt. Bakker kept him informed, the man's slow drawl crawling up to the excited level in Don's earpiece. "Ah'm gitting a mite more movement outside, Agent Eppes. Them tracks is gitting more an' more trampled over, like there's a whole bunch of 'em comin' to dinner." Pause. "Now them tracks split. I think they're of a mind to go knocking on both of our doors, Agent Eppes."

_Me, too_, Don thought, his breath coming too fast to reply.

Wrachet up the nerves. "Ah cain't tell fer certain, but t'wouldn't surprise me none if we were lookin' at twenty or more of them critters. Mason, how you comin' with pryin' the rest of our boys away from that fancy TV set?"

Don could hear the other side of the conversation. Bakker had kept all the channels open so that Don could listen in.

"Lootenant, somebody wedged a pipe in here tight into the door handle. I can't get it free."

"Keep at it, Mason. Yer a soldier; you don't quit. Git a hacksaw and bust 'em out. We're gonna need those boys in just a few minutes. Hustle it up, private!"

"Yes, sir, lootenant. Hey, lootenant! Riley inside is shouting that Schmidt ain't in there! Says he never came back after MacNeil relieved him at the front door."

"What?" Don's steps faltered.

Bakker had the same notion. "Private MacNeil, how's it lookin' at the front door?"

Silence.

More silence.

Bakker swore. "You hear that, Agent Eppes?"

"Nothing to hear, lieutenant."

"Exactly mah thought, Agent Eppes. I ain't seein' much of anything wigglin' on the camera, neither. I got footprints but no footprint makers. You want I should go investigate that front door?"

Tough call. Intel versus defense. Of course, let those enemy agents get inside the bunker, and there wouldn't be much to defend. Decision made. "Go."

"You got it, Agent Eppes."

* * *

Colby shoved Charlie back against the wall. "Wait," he hissed, peering around the corner. 

Thoroughly scared now, Charlie clutched his laptop to his chest. Colby wasn't sure if Charlie thought that he was protecting the machine or that the machine was protecting Charlie's chest, but at the moment it was irrelevant. The only gun in the immediate vicinity was in Colby's hand, and Colby intended to keep it that way.

Don had told him to run, and to take Charlie with him. Colby took that to mean that the whole mission was falling apart and, considering the level of concern in his boss's voice, figured that there weren't too many people under this mountain that he could trust. There was Don, and there was David. And there was Don. And David. And Colby could trust Charlie to be on his side, but 'on his side' and 'doing the sensible, FBI-approved' thing were two different animals. Charlie didn't think like everyone else, which was why the NSA had tapped the mathematician for this particular gig that was rapidly getting flushed down the toilet.

_Working in a vacuum here, Don. Not enough intel. What the hell is going on at your end? Why are we running?_ Colby knew that something about Foster was kinky, but that was it. It could be someone in Foster's chain of command, handing the NSA agent bogus info, but it could also be Foster himself and Colby wasn't about to figure out whether it was a fifty-fifty proposition. Charlie could calculate the odds of Foster being dirty in his spare time. Colby was going to err on the side of caution.

But _Don_ didn't know that Foster was a big fat question mark. He had just heard half of the story when Colby called him, which meant there was something else happening on Don's end. Which meant that there was another piece of this pie that Colby didn't know, which meant that Colby couldn't trust anyone except for Don and David and now Colby was back to square one: hiding in an empty corner with a math geek whose eyes were bigger than the paper plates that they'd used to tote the slices of pizza around. Colby could feel that pizza sitting in his gut, congealing.

Colby kept his voice down. "Don said to skedaddle. Don't know what's happening, but something doesn't sound good. Gonna look for a place to hang out for a while, some place where they're not gonna be looking for us."

Charlie swallowed hard, doing his best to keep up with Colby. "Where?"

"I'm thinking that I want to get us out of this mountain," Colby admitted, looking around some more. "This is where they're looking for you, so we want to be somewhere else." Another futile look. There was only two directions to go: back and forth. However, forth meant arriving at the T intersection up ahead with two more options, so Colby selected that route. More options to take meant more opportunities for pursuers to take the wrong path.

_See, Charlie? You're not the only one who thinks about probabilities. I think about them all the time when I'm about to get my ass shot off_.

Wrong path. There was no one there, but there didn't need to be. There was a small black package wedged in among the pipes running alongside the cinder block wall, the package just slightly bigger than a bread box. There were no identifying markings on it, simply a lot of duct tape securing it to the pipe. It looked entirely innocuous, completely capable of being walked by without incident.

Colby had never seen it before, and he knew that he'd walked these corridors several times in the last forty-eight hours and he had been looking for non-descript packages just like the one in front of them. Therefore: it was new to the environment. And, despite having no labels or titles in any language at all, Colby was able to recognize it for what it was:

A bomb.

Colby whirled Charlie around to face the opposite direction. "Run!"


	12. Cold 12 Numb3rs

Someone, Don was rapidly coming to the conclusion, was doing a damn fine job of whittling down the numbers in short order. Trapping almost all of Bakker's men in one room had been a stroke of genius, effectively cutting down the opposition by more than two-thirds. And the soldiers were trapped without any weapons, since they were all off duty at the moment. Don spared an idle moment to wonder which football team was winning—he might be about to lose his career and his life in the next few minutes, but that game meant a _bet!_

Back to business. Don mentally reviewed the map of the mountain bunker in his head. David should be just around the next bend. He listened carefully; there was nothing. He edged forward, chanced a quick peek around the corner.

There was a single body collapsed on the cold linoleum floor amid the pipes running alongside. Don recognized the body immediately, and it took all of his self control not to go dashing forward.

His training kicked in: more listening, more looking to make sure that it wasn't a trap. And, when he was certain, Don carefully edged forward, his gun in his hand and his heart in his mouth. "David?"

No response. But his team member was breathing, a quiet and slow pace that told Don exactly why the FBI agent was taking an unscheduled nap in the middle of the afternoon on the floor.

Another look around assured Don that the two of them were alone. He crossed swiftly to David and knelt, holstering his weapon. "David! David, wake up!"

Incoherent mutter.

Don peeled back the eyelids. Yeah, pupils wider than a barn door and twice as deep. If he hadn't realized it before, it was obvious now: David had been drugged. When had it happened? Don could bet it was recently, and it was likely put on the food that had been sent in by the area resort. And, since Don himself felt perfectly wide awake and had partaken of some of that same food, Don was willing to bet that someone had salted David's food while he was out of Don's vicinity, which meant that someone had done it while David was watching Charlie.

Things were getting clearer and clearer, at least from one aspect of the mission. Someone here inside this bunker was out to remove the consultant on a very permanent basis, and there was only a finite number of people working around Charlie: David, Colby, Foster, and Don himself. Don felt he could eliminate himself from the list, since he didn't recall doing anything that foolish. David and Colby likewise; Don could trust them with his life. _You're trusting them with Charlie's life_, whispered his inner voice.

_I can trust them_.

Foster was the unknown, and, right now, a major question mark. Colby had tried to warn him and couldn't, not over the communications link that Don was worried was bugged. Had Foster bugged it? It was a possibility. And Foster could have spiked David's food. Hell, he probably tried to spike Charlie's food as well, but his brother would ignore everything edible in his quest for the code key. How was Colby? Had the other agent also eaten any of the food that Foster had brought to Charlie's work area? Probably; the younger agent still ate like a teen-ager, packing it away into muscle and brawn.

Which meant that he'd better not rely too heavily on Colby, either. Which left Charlie.

Crap. That left Don's team with a genius who could calculate his way out of a paper bag but wouldn't realize that cutting his way out with scissors would work faster and better. Crap.

What about Schmidt? Where did he fit in? Don wasn't about to dismiss his gut instinct. Something had triggered that sense of unease, and Don still didn't know what it was.

The piece in his ear was eerily silent. Bakker had left the comm. console alone while he went to investigate the front door and, Don presumed, the lieutenant would need to stay there to fight off anyone who came up and knocked twice with weapons bigger than a pea-shooter. Those footprints looked more and more scary in his mind's eye. Don hated being out of touch with what was going on, but having armed enemy combatants inside this concrete bunker was worse.

First things first; he needed to get David out of the way to sleep off whatever it was that Foster gave him. Don hoisted his team member into a half-sitting position. "David! Wake up, man."

"Don?" Eyes still closed. "Go 'way. It's Sunday." Words slurred.

Don shook him. "David, wake up. You've been drugged, David. Open your eyes."

"Lemme sleep."

"Hell." Don pulled and tugged until he got David staggering onto his feet. He dragged the man's arm over his shoulders, pausing to stabilize them both, wondering if simply flopping the man over his shoulder would be any easier.

Which is when he felt it. Sound came later.

It started as a low rumbling that seeped through the linoleum floor and wriggled through the soles of his shoes. Don tilted, couldn't help it, not with David pulling him off balance, grabbed for the local pipe to help keep them both upright. The rumbling continued and got louder, more insistent, sound finally tottering in like the distant thunder of a squadron of tanks bearing down on them at top speed.

_What the hell—?_

There were two choices: an earthquake, or a bomb. Don didn't like either choice, figured that he had no part in the decision, and moved on. Earthquake in this part of the world? Possible, but not likely. Bomb? Given what else was happening, a hell of a lot more in line with this mission. Don decided on the spot to consider it guilty of being a bomb until proven innocent.

Didn't mean they were out of danger. Large quantities of mountain were shifting above, below, and around them. The pipes rattled. One broke loose, spraying an anemic quantity of water into the hall where it mixed with the dirt someone had missed to turn into a sloppy mud. Don cursed, turned his back to the filthy mess, trying to shield the still half-awake agent and drag him away from the water. Hoping that the cold water would also rouse his team member was also in there, somewhere mixed in between _gotta get everyone out of here_ and _what next, dude?_

The 'next' arrived in short order. Don's first inkling that his participation in current events was coming to an end was when the pipes overhead suddenly burst under the pressure. The water was only a portion of the problem. The larger issue was the quantity of mountain that was coming down with it.

Later on, Don would never remember whether the lights went out because the power failed or because it was blocked out by a ton of earth.

* * *

"Colby?" 

No answer.

Charlie repeated the query: "Colby?" Maybe if he refused to accept that he wasn't getting an answer, he could pretend that this wasn't happening. He could pretend that it wasn't pitch black, that he could hear something more than the steady drip drip drip of water leaking from a nearby broken pipe. He could pretend that his mouth wasn't filled with the finest of mountain dirt that used to be located well above his head. And he could pretend that there was a way out of here.

"Colby?"

The absence of an answer didn't change. Charlie was forced to acknowledge that Colby wasn't answering, that possibly he couldn't answer. That perhaps he was dead. Or injured beyond the ability to speak. Or possibly he was simply walled away from the mathematician by heaping mounds of dirt. Yes, that was it, Charlie chose to decide. Colby was on the other side of this cave-in, wondering how to dig Charlie out in the shortest possible time, especially with the parameters of the problem including the lack of shovels, bulldozers, and the like. That had to be the answer. After all, Charlie was working on an important code for the NSA, one that already had the imprint of a notorious terrorist, and the NSA would need this information with all haste. Of _course_ Colby was working at getting Charlie and his data out. He was contacting Don even now, and Don was calling for the appropriate equipment from the nearby construction companies. If Don was smart—and there was no doubt in Charlie's mind that his brother was indeed smart. Don wasn't a mathematician, but his mind worked as brilliantly as Charlie's in his own way. How else had Don moved up in the ranks so quickly?—then he would even perhaps be contacting Eppes senior for advice on the best way to excavate under these circumstances. Alan Eppes had more than once demonstrated a practical side that contributed significantly to Don's cases. This would be one more.

Still black. Charlie strained to hear something, anything that would tell him that there was purposeful movement nearby.

Nothing.

_Who am I kidding? Colby's dead, and I will be too, as soon as the air and/or food and/or water gives out_.

Staying here was not the preferred option. Charlie had no idea how large the area was where he was trapped, but remaining in place, while an excellent plan for getting rescued while lost in the woods, wasn't going to work. He needed to get out.

No light, but that needed to be a minor detail. Charlie stood up shakily, feeling out with his fingers—_wow. I've still got my laptop with me. Did I Velcro it to my hand?_—and touched something cold and hard and rough. Good: it was the wall, and it was still in an upright position that suggested that it was relatively intact. And that meant that Charlie could follow it along to another corridor, find his way back to somewhere safe.

Of course, that brought up the thought of Foster. Contrary to popular opinion, Charlie was not oblivious to everything except numbers. He was very good at applied mathematics, which meant he looked at how to describe real world situations in terms of those numbers, deciphered the probabilities of eventual outcomes, and applied those findings to real life. Right now real life was telling him that there was something wrong with the NSA. There was the list that Foster had given him, the one with the wrong names that didn't sync with the code. And there was the fact that Charlie himself had been attacked in his office at CalSci while the NSA agents were there. Charlie quailed at the memory, wondering how the agent was, the one who had been left behind. Don had said that Megan hadn't been able to get any further details on the man's condition and left it at that. Charlie hadn't pushed, hadn't wanted to push. Closing out a case was someone else's job. Don had told him that the NSA was working at removing the mole, and that had been good enough for Charlie. Charlie had his own part to accomplish.

Now Charlie wished that he had asked more about it. It seemed as though this case had brought the entire problem here to this concrete bunker and dumped it into Charlie's lap, not just the code but the mole and his whole retinue.

Okay, time to take a leaf from his older brother. Don was good in situations like this. What would Don do now? Easy; he'd start exploring his surroundings, look for an escape hatch.

Okay, Charlie could do that. With his hand along the cold and crumbling concrete cinder blocks, Charlie inched his way forward. Didn't matter if it was north, south, up or down. It was movement, and it was better than staying where he was.

A door. Charlie recognized the outline immediately, traced the rectangular rim, only stumbling slightly when he encountered the bent metal door itself. The roof had partly caved in, pushing the metal of the door into something more resembling a pretzel. But there it stopped, leaving the entrance available.

No, Charlie wouldn't bother exploring the interior beyond the door. This one would be merely another room, probably a conference room, with no egress. He bypassed the invitation, choosing to move forward.

Yeah, this next piece was more like it: a stairwell. The second step was cracked in half, he could feel that beneath the soft sole of his shoe, but the steps were ascending, toward the exterior and safety, and it was moving him away from the area of the bomb. How far did this staircase go? Charlie had no idea, but finding out seemed like the right thing to do.

He moved onward.

* * *

So if he didn't hurt, how come it was so hard damn to move? 

The answer came to Don far more easily than he would have liked: the bunker had caved in. There was three cubic yards of dirt above, below, and around him, all shifting every time he tried to move.

There was more. There was a warm body flopped next to him, a warm body that emitted the occasional gentle snore indicating life but not consciousness.

The rest of his environment was distressingly easy to diagnose: no light. No power, no electricity, which meant no lights. The air seemed to be okay, Don even detecting a small breeze suggesting that he wasn't about to suffocate immediately.

Hell of a situation and, he remembered, with a strong possibility of getting worse. There was a squad of presumed terrorists outside, trying to get inside. Hell, with the presumptive bomb going off, they were probably _already_ inside. The entrances were ridiculously easy to defend, even with a single dedicated soldier and an automatic, but there was only so much that one man could do against a dozen or more.

Which meant that Don needed to do something to even the odds, and what he did depended on what his own situation was. Best option: get to the trapped soldiers in the rec room where the Dophins had completed whupping the Rams' collective ass or vice versa to set those soldiers loose like a bunch of angry hornets. However, if the way was blocked by a wall of recently relocated dirt, then his next best option was to reinforce one of the entrances or, better still, see if he could call for help. Don didn't mind admitting that this situation had gotten _way _out of control. _Thanks, boss! Really loving this case!_

What to do with David? That question was answered when the man groaned.

"David?"

Another groan. "What the hell happened? What did I drink?"

"In the old days I think it was called a Mickey Finn." Don grinned. At least one thing was looking up. He dragged himself to his feet, dirt cascading off and tumbling to the floor in a shower of dust unseen in the dark. "You were drugged, man."

"I've got a hangover the size of…" David searched for an apt comparison and failed. He settled for breathing through his nose, hoping that the interior decorator of his gut would be satisfied with a serene décor instead of something with a little more flare to it. Another sharp intake of breath, indicating the agent had opened his eyes. "Don, it's dark."

"No kidding, man."

"Why?" Carefully.

"Just a wild guess, but you slept through a bomb, David."

Long pause. Then: "crap."

"You said it." There was a grin on Don's face, but no accompanying humor. "You want the rest of the bad news?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." Don laid it out, the whole miserable scenario. At the end of it, David was a little bit more coherent. Don didn't know if the sleepy time cocktail had worn off or the high threat level had gotten to the man, but in the long run it didn't matter. Don now had a trustworthy agent at his back. David might be a little slow on the uptake for another hour or two, but Don could trust him. And he sure needed to.

David took a deep breath. "Can we get through to the rest of the soldiers?"

"Don't know. You up to finding out?"

"Considering the alternative, Don, I think the answer is a resounding 'yes'."

* * *

Colby had already run through all the curses that he knew in English twice, and then started on the collection of ones that he'd picked up in Afghanistan, deciding that those sounded a lot nastier than the ones from Idaho that he'd learned as a kid striking out on the local baseball diamond. 

It was not the situation he wanted to find himself in, and certainly not what he'd anticipated when choppering in less than forty-eight hours ago. Hell, it wasn't even what he'd expected a bare ten minutes ago. Just six hundred seconds past, he was dragging one terrified mathematician through the corridors of this damn place, looking for a hole to hide in or, better still, a way out of this maze. Then the damn bomb went off, and things had gone black for a while.

Hah. Things were still black. There wasn't a speck of light anywhere near his eyeballs, and Colby was relatively certain that those orbs were still in working condition.

Time to try out the ears. "Charlie?"

Option one: his ears weren't working. Option two: Charlie wasn't where Colby was. Option three: Charlie had been killed by the blast—no, don't even go there, dude. Colby had only known Charlie for a short time but it had been long enough. Colby knew that, no matter what, he would remember the funny little math geek for the rest of his life. Charlie had that effect on people. Kind of like a car accident; you tended to remember that for the rest of your life.

Great. Now he was comparing Charlie to an accident. Maybe that was somehow due to the bunker coming down around their ears. Now if Colby could only figure out how to get two asses out of here, he'd be doing okay.

Well, that wouldn't happen with Colby staying seated on his backside. Getting up and exploring this little pocket of corridor was next on the agenda—

_Crap!_

It was several long moments before Colby could do anything except try to get himself to breathing again. Persuading his brains to figure out what had happened was _waaay_ out of the question until that task had been accomplished, and the sharp throbbing in his leg died down to a mere mind-numbing imperative of _move and you're dead!_

Right. Damage had occurred, and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of his left knee, which meant that moving swiftly in any direction was _so_ not happening.

All right, what was Colby capable of? Listening: all he heard was the slither of more pebbles tumbling down, left over from the explosion and still shifting into new and unique forms. And, more importantly, there was what he didn't hear: he didn't hear Charlie yelling beyond the tumbled down wall, and he didn't hear Don or David or any of the soldier boys calling out, and, most important of all: he didn't hear gunfire. Didn't mean that nobody was doing any shooting, but any shots fired had to be far enough away so that they weren't an immediate threat to either Colby or Charlie, assuming that Charlie wasn't too far away. Colby didn't see how Charlie could be all that distant, considering that they'd been less than ten feet apart when the bomb went off.

Okay, Colby had listened. And he'd explored his environment as far as his arms would reach. Which, granted, wasn't all that far, but it was better than not checking it out. Time to figure out just how much damage had been done. He reached down toward the point of maximum intensity on his leg.

_This is gonna hurt like a..._

* * *

Up, or down? Those were Charlie's only two options. Going back to where he came from would only lead him a pile of rubble, and the left corridor, the only one that was passable, wasn't likely to lead him to the outside. And outside was where Charlie wanted to be at the moment. Outside, where there weren't any bombs to take down a mountain around his ears. Outside, where there would be help and he could get people to go inside and drag his brother and David and Colby and the rest of the Army people out to safety. 

Up. Good decision. Up meant heading toward the outside. Charlie didn't know how many levels this old military bunker had, but it was a safe bet that there were a lot more than Charlie had seen. Charlie was readily willing to admit that he'd been shell-shocked upon arrival, and had thrown himself into the work of decrypting the code, trying to block the rest of reality out of his consciousness. Now he wished that he'd done a little exploring, that he'd wandered through the corridors just to see what was down here.

No help for it now, and the NSA probably wouldn't have wanted him to 'waste time' on exploration. They'd made it very clear that the code needed to be broken now, and all the things that Charlie had seen merely reinforced that imperative. Hah; seeing a bomb taped to the pipe, and Colby's reaction to it, said that not only did the code need to be broken but that there was someone unsavory with them that had done the bomb-planting. Which meant that there were people nearby that Charlie couldn't trust.

Let's see: he could trust Don, and David and Colby.

And that was it. Realistically, he couldn't trust anyone else. Given time, he could work out the logic puzzle that would give him the greatest possible of deciphering who the bomb-planter was, but…

Foster. Best bet at the moment. Foster had given Charlie the fake list, the one designed to waste time with false names so that Charlie couldn't decipher the code as quickly. That ploy had been foiled when Don had come up with a better one from Megan back in L.A. Yeah, that would fit. Foster, realizing that Charlie had detected the problem, had brought the bomb, planted it, and then skedaddled from the room. It was only sheer luck that Don had told Colby to get Charlie out of there before the bomb went off.

Nope; no such thing, really, as luck. Not in this sort of situation. What had led Don to reach out to Colby?

More questions that needed answers. And in the meantime, there were these stairs to be climbed. Charlie grabbed onto the rail, letting go when the steel rail threatened to fall out of the wall. Charlie gulped, and clutched his laptop to his chest.

_Still hanging onto the laptop, are we?_

_Got anything better to hang onto?_


	13. Cold 13 Numb3rs

Crap. This was so not a good situation. Pitch black, David Sinclair still trying to swim out of the depths of whatever Foster had drugged him with. Don really wished that he had Foster here with them, right now, hands around the NSA agent's neck. The man was a traitor to his country. He had to be the mole that the NSA was worried about. There was no longer any doubt in Don's mind.

Lots of things for the NSA to worry about. Don hadn't forgotten about the little scene that had supposedly happened at Charlie's office. There were many things that his brother didn't see in the same way that others did, but being in the thick of a fight between two NSA agents and four terrorists wasn't something that it was easy to make a mistake over. Megan Reeves was a damn fine agent, more than capable of investigating whether or not an attack had taken place. There was a cover up going on, and it was coming from some pretty powerful sources. Of that, Don was certain.

He bent down, shook David's shoulder. "Wake up, David. Nap time's over."

Groan. "Coffee?" Pleading. David didn't even drink coffee. Didn't matter; the man needed caffeine, or whatever substitute would chase away the remnants of Foster's little cocktail. Damn traitor.

Then a voice floated out of the darkness: "You. Up ahead. State your name."

Crap. Who was—

Speaking English, which meant a better chance of being on Don's side. Don whipped around in a crouch, peering through the dark, his handgun solid in his hand and aimed at the point just below where the voice came from. He was a bare milli-second away from pulling the trigger. "Who's that?"

The voice was deep and melodious—and all American. "Sgt. Jonas Blane, the 303rd Logistical. We heard the rumbling, and came to see how many beer kegs you were rolling down the mountainside."

Don straightened, trying not to collapse with relief. Had all of those prayers been answered? What was the army doing on his door step? The answer came quickly on the heels of the question: Lt. Bakker. Somehow the man had been able to call for help before the power went down. Hot damn; the man had probably saved all of their lives. A real hero. Don hoped that he was still alive. "Special Agent Don Eppes, FBI. How did you find us?"

A chuckle from the man behind the sergeant. "Luck had nothing to do with it, Special Agent Eppes." He stuck out his hand, keeping his automatic in the other, and Don had no doubt that the man knew how to use it. "Colonel Tom Ryan, the 303rd Logistical." He grinned, as much to put Don at ease as anything else. "Let's just say a barn owl gave a hoot a little while ago, and leave at that, shall we?" Ryan got down to business. "Fill us in. I understand we've got a few houseflies floating around in this bowl of soup?"

Don grimaced. "You could say that. Understand, colonel, that this is a high level national security operation. I'm not sure that I can tell you very much, except that I've got a consultant located somewhere on the third level that we had better dig out pronto. Chances are that he's sitting on some very sensitive information. And that there's an NSA mole named Foster, and another one slipped in from the army named Schmidt."

"Doesn't surprise me to hear that, Eppes," Ryan said. "My men and I were ordered into the vicinity with a very strange set of orders that now makes a hell of a lot more sense. Somebody wanted us nearby in case you got yourselves into a mess that was more than the FBI was prepared to handle."

That sounded more than a bit alarming. "And who might have issued those orders, colonel? Mind you, this is national security. I have a need to know."

"I'm sure you do, Agent Eppes, but I don't have an answer to give you. Oh, I've got chain of command, but that's not going to take you anywhere. The real orders came from someone whose name won't show up on any piece of paper." Ryan cocked his head. "You got any thoughts?"

"Wish I did, colonel. Wish I—" Don broke off. It clicked. "I do."

"Yeah? Care to share?"

"My brother," Don told him grimly. "The consultant. Find him, and we'll find the answer."

"The consultant's your brother?"

"Yeah." Don sighed, thinking of all the trouble his brother had gotten him into, from the time that Charlie was four and straight until thirty and beyond. "Trust me on this, colonel. Having a math genius for a brother isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Ryan nodded slowly. "Sounds like it has a good chance of getting you killed, Special Agent Eppes."

"Yeah. Let's see if we can avoid that part."

* * *

It was damn hard going. Every movement he made, every muscle twitch sent a torrent of agony shooting down his leg, threatening to send Colby back into blessed unconsciousness. He would have welcomed the respite except for one thing: Charlie. His assignment. His responsibility. His friend. Charlie was nowhere near him, which meant that either the man had been on the other side of the bomb-induced cave-in, or that the math genius was crushed under the rubble where Colby couldn't see him. There was no benefit in assuming that the man was dead, so Colby was working at getting himself out of here. _'Cause there ain't anyone else around who's gonna do it, dude_, he told himself.

Then he heard it: a click. He knew that click. It belonged to a rifle of some sort. He froze. There were only two types of people in the vicinity with rifles like that: his side, and the terrorist side. And Colby's side of people were currently on the other side of this collapsed bunker.

_Crap_.

He inched his hand toward his own handgun, still remarkably holstered at his side. He eased it out. Maybe he could at least take one or two of them with him.

The voice barked out, "Identify yourself."

_What the hell—?_ That was English. _American_ English, and no intruder to this country could manage that particular brand with the ease that the speaker had just demonstrated. "Who's that?" he called back, hoping against hope. But Colby kept his hand on his gun. He'd been wrong before, expected to be wrong in the future—although if he was wrong right now, he probably didn't have much of a future.

"I said, identify yourself."

"Special Agent Colby Granger, FBI." Colby gave in. He didn't have much to lose. "Who're you?"

"303rd Logistical," came the answer. The gun in the man's hand didn't waver, and Colby could barely make out the outline of a second man backing him up. "What's your status?"

"Army?"

"That's what I said, friend. What's your status?"

"Thank God." It was true. Help had arrived. Somehow, against all of the odds, Don must have gotten a message out. Help had arrived and it was standing here, pointing a gun at him. Didn't matter. Colby could have kissed the man.

No time for that. Colby summoned his strength. "Listen, you have to get through this rubble over here. On the other side is another man, my assignment. We're here on a national security matter, and there's a bunch of terrorist types outside—"

"We've seen them," the second man interrupted. "Actually, we've seen their work. They got through the back door."

"Crap." Colby looked around helplessly, caught underneath the blocks. "Crap," he repeated. He took a deep breath; there were more important things at stake. "Don't worry about me; I'm not going anywhere. Just get to that man. It's national security, and it's big, dude. The guy's name is Charlie Eppes; a short guy with curly dark hair, probably has a laptop glued to his belt buckle. You gotta get to him before those terrorists do. Or before the NSA dude does."

"NSA?" That clearly didn't sound right to his rescuers. "The NSA is one of us."

"Not this one. Charlie thinks he's a mole, or that someone's feeding the NSA bad intel. Don't trust him. Not yet, anyway. You gotta find Charlie," Colby insisted wildly.

"Slow down, Granger," the first one told him. "You're not going anywhere, not for a bit. You got any other friends around here?"

"There's a squad of privates and corporals, stuck in a conference room 'bout two levels over. Somebody locked 'em in, and they can't get out," Colby reported. "I got two other FBI agents on site, Eppes and Sinclair. They were far away from where the bomb went off—"

"Bomb?"

"Yeah. I saw it, tried to get Charlie away before it went off—"

"Didn't do too badly." Number two tossed another chunk of cinder block away, multi-tasking by doing rescue work and gathering intel at the same time. Some of Colby's leg was now exposed, but Colby was having a hard time looking at it. He wasn't squeamish, but all of that red stuff exposed by the wash of the flashlight wasn't just blood. It was muscle, and bone, and—

"Wait a minute—you said Eppes? I thought that was the name of your consultant. He's an FBI agent? Or NSA?"

Colby couldn't help the groan that hissed out when another cinder block was pulled off, letting blood back into his crushed leg. "Charlie Eppes," he gasped, trying to get the words out. He grabbed onto a nearby rock, trying to transfer the pain into the cold and unfeeling granite. "The consultant. Math dude. Don Eppes is the FBI agent. His brother." He could feel the cold sweat breaking out into little rivulets across his forehead. Lights danced in his vision, which was odd because there was very little light in this pocket of ruined corridor.

"Right." They both kept working, and Colby could hear the word that the soldier didn't say: _nepotism_.

"Not like that, guy. Charlie's the real deal, and Don's earned his reputation—oww! Watch it, guy!"

"Sorry." The soldier wasn't. Getting Colby out from the rubble was more important. "What about the terrorists?"

"Don't know," Colby gasped. _Crap_. The only thing left to him now was his hearing—and the agony in his leg. Fortunately, the agony was receding, but Colby feared it was because consciousness too was on its way out. "Don and Lt. Bakker were watching for 'em, things were going south…" His voice trailed off. "Gotta get to Charlie…dude…"

The second soldier took a moment to peel Colby's eyelids back. "He's out."

* * *

"Snake Doctor. What's your situation, Betty Blue?" Blane answered the squib that buzzed through his radio. They all paused in the conference room, listening intently. A small shower of pebbles hissed through the silence. Don stared at the tall sergeant, waiting for an answer.

The words were hoarse with static. "Found a kissing cousin, Snake Doctor. He says that the package has been damaged beyond recovery and is requesting an escort to go home to mama."

"What? Say again, Betty Blue."

"The package has been damaged beyond recovery, Snake Doctor. Our kissing cousin confirms, and wants to tell mama ASAP."

Don's blood ran cold. The room swayed, and it wasn't because the mountain was shifting underneath him once again. Even through the coded speech, the meaning was coming through with entirely too much clarity. _The package has been damaged beyond recovery_. Which meant that _Charlie_ was damaged beyond recovery. That Charlie was dead. That's what the voice on the other end of the radio meant. Another pair of Ryan's men had called in, had found someone in this hell hole of a mission, and reported that his brother was dead. No if's, and's, or but's. Dead. Who had they found, maybe Colby Granger who had been trying to get Charlie out of here? The man that Don was trusting his brother's life to? Didn't matter. Charlie was dead. End of story. Game over.

He clutched onto the table rim as the only solid piece in his life. Charlie was dead! What was he going to tell his father? Forget about the FBI, forget about the NSA. What was he going to tell his father? And Amita, and Larry, and all the other people who knew and appreciated his brother, all the gifts that his geeky brother would now never bring to the world because Charlie's stupid FBI brother screwed up his job of protecting Charlie from the bullies of the world.

The rest of the radio'ed conversation floated over his head. He saw Ryan shake his head at Blane, saw the colonel looking at Don himself with pity and—worse—understanding.

Blane spoke into his radio. "Negative, Betty Blue. Inform the cousin that the telegram has been sent. Maintain current objective."

"Roger that, Snake Doctor. Maintaining current objective. Betty Blue out."

There was a very long silence, with both army personnel regarding Don Eppes with something more than sympathy.

Don was beyond noticing. The last words kept ringing in his head: beyond recovery. Beyond recovery. It didn't seem possible. The world just wasn't the world without that mop of dark curly hair making Don Eppes' life miserable in one fashion or another. Don licked his lips, tried to see if his hearing had been faulty. "Did he—?"

Ryan was direct. "I'm sorry, son." Ryan wasn't much older than Don himself, but that didn't matter. Clearly Ryan knew what it was like to lose a man; had lost far too many. The men that Ryan lost may not have been biological brothers, but each and every one was as close as a brother for all of that.

It didn't help. The power of coherent thought was beyond Don's capabilities. All he could do was to clutch the table, trying to lie to himself and say _it's not true!_

Ryan moved in, took Don's arm firmly. "There's nothin' you can do for him sittin' here, Eppes. Move out. Make his life worth somethin'. Make the bastards who killed him pay."

Yeah. Don could do that. He still had his gun, and there were still a boatload of murdering terrorists who had attacked his brother, his team, and his country. He hardened his soul, saw David put steel into his own eye along with the gun in his hand.

Ryan nodded with grim approbation. "Move out," was all he said.


	14. Cold 14 Numb3rs

Yeah, well, the quarters in this part of the collapsed bunker were getting more than a little claustrophobic, and Charlie had never considered himself prone to such flights of fancy. This part had been particularly hard hit, and Charlie amused himself by calculating in his head just how much force had been transmitted along the beams of the corridors to cause this much damage. There had to be some connecting beams somewhere, because Charlie estimated that he'd traveled at least the distance of three corridors and up two levels to get to this point.

Dead end. Okay, not exactly a dead end, since there was a door. But considering that the door was a bit difficult to open, and since there was a large quantity of dirt threatening to pile in through that narrow opening—yes, Charlie was willing to designate it as a dead end for his current purposes. Which meant retracing his steps—or rather, his sliding across his belly through a narrow aperture that used to be a wide hallway—back to the previous juncture and then taking the alternate route which had shown no greater promise than this one.

And the word 'dead' was not one that he cared to use too often. Gave unpleasant connotations under the present circumstances.

There was no light. Well, actually, sort of, if one cared to acknowledge the dim red emergency bulb in the distance which was trying to compensate for the next three which had been taken out by falling debris. If he really needed to see something, Charlie could always fire up the computer and use the light from the screen. But the laptop battery was limited, and saving it for something really worthwhile was most likely in his best interests.

Charlie stopped in his tracks. It hit him. The key to solving the cipher. Variation on Murphy's Law: things will always occur at the least opportune moment, and this was turning out to be no exception. The key to solving the cipher was obvious, and his laptop with its limited battery life was in his hand, and once he had the answer there was no NSA person to give it to who would then gaze with admiration upon the consultant. _Story of my life_. No, not really—Charlie had to admit honestly that he'd gotten lots of accolades throughout his career—but Charlie felt like griping.

Decisions, decisions. If he turned on the computer to finish deciphering the code, he'd delay getting out of this predicament. On the other hand, if he didn't turn on the computer, he had an equally great chance of being found by the wrong side before he finished solving it and then chances of actually solving the code hovered between slim and none. Bottom line, the end result if Charlie didn't pause to work on his primary goal wouldn't be pretty, and would likely include the NSA never getting the answer that it wanted, mole or no. On the third hand, if he solved it and then suffocated—and yes, the air was smelling a little rancid right about now—then at least the NSA could dig the answer out of his laptop that was tucked next to his corpse, assuming that they could break through the protection that he had no intention of removing at the present time. Well, hey, that old guy at the NSA who had never given Charlie his last name was also pretty good with code. He'd probably be able to get into Charlie's laptop. Yeah, that meant that Charlie could safely go ahead and crack the cipher with a reasonable expectation that the NSA would get the results after Charlie himself was dead and gone.

All of which led to the fact that Charlie _wanted_ to finish solving the puzzle. It was his _raison d'etre_. It was what he lived to do. And if he was about to die in this concrete mausoleum, then let it be doing what he loved.

Decision made. Charlie turned on the laptop.

* * *

"Shh."

Colby didn't need a second invitation. He didn't even need the first. Getting lowered to the cold concrete floor was enough for the moment, and his leg hurt like hell.

It meant that the army dude who had Colby's arm wrapped around his neck, dragging him toward what Colby devoutly hoped was an exit with an accompanying ambulance ride to the nearest facility equipped with morphine, required all of his limbs in order to fight. It meant that there were hostiles up ahead, hostiles who hadn't realized that the army was on their tail. It meant that there was going to be some action very soon.

Sigh. Colby almost wished that someone would just shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery. He dragged his handgun out of its holster, amazed that he still had it.

The army dude—Brown, his name was—spared him a glance. "Stay down," was all he said, as quietly as he could directly into Colby's ear. He let his eyes do the rest of the talking: _you gonna be able to handle that gun?_

Colby nodded grimly. _If I have to_.

Quick and small return smile, fierce and determined. Eyes saying a lot more than words ever could. _Let's make sure that you don't have to_.

The other one, Mack AKA Dirt Diver, was calling the shots. Finger talk sufficed: _three, two, one._

Blam.

Fast and deadly. In the blink of an eye the three enemy combatants were down and no longer moving in a very permanent fashion.

Colby shivered, hoped that it was impending blood loss leading to shock instead of what he thought it was. Colby was no fool; he'd been a Ranger, and he knew what to look for. These two weren't simple Army clerks working in a Logistical Unit. They were a hell of lot more dangerous than that.

These were probably the two most dangerous men he'd ever met in his life, and that was going some.

Colby was profoundly grateful that they were on his side.

_Charlie, what the hell have you gotten us all into, dude?

* * *

_

There were six up ahead. At least, that was what Don deciphered from Blane's finger talk, and he could tell that Blane didn't like it. He didn't blame the army sergeant; there were only four of them, and David Sinclair, for all of his determination, was still yawning from the drugs that the damn NSA agent had fed him. Don almost hoped that they came across Foster. He'd really like to take that one into custody. He'd like to bring this whole mess out into the open, see the man stand trial for treason. What else could it be? The NSA mole had drugged one agent, probably tried it on another, probably was responsible for the bomb that had taken down this whole bunker.

And what about Schmidt? Don hadn't seen that traitor either, and by now Don was ready to give Schmidt credit for locking his mates into the conference room with the Dolphins/Rams game. It was looking more and more as though his hunch had been right about the man. That puddle of water by the man's feet when Don had checked on him? Obviously from outside, when he'd gone to talk to the intruders.

Next question: were Foster and Schmidt working together? It seemed a safe bet. What one didn't get, the other would. A bomb to take down the consultant, followed by a team of gun-toting madmen to polish off the remnants. There were strings leading to more strings leading to more strings; it would take Charlie a year to decipher all the connections that Don wanted to know about, and right now there wasn't the time to do it.

Besides: Charlie was dead.

Another gut stab to the heart. It was physically painful.

No time for that now. Only time to make sure that at least one of Alan Eppes' sons lived so that his old man wouldn't die at the end of a long life alone and bitter.

Don didn't understand the chain of command going on in front of him. Colonel Ryan was clearly the superior officer, yet he was delegating operational control for this mission to the tall sergeant. It was an unusual thing to do to a Logistics clerk—Don sucked in his breath.

Not a Logistics clerk. Not even close.

He should have recognized it sooner, especially with all the paranoia floating around. Sergeant Blane was no more a Logistics clerk than Don himself. The easy way the man held his gun, the way he slipped along the corridors…

Special Ops, or near enough that it made no difference.

What the hell was this mission? Don felt even more outclassed, and out-gunned. This was supposed to have been a simple and straight forward bodyguard mission. This was supposed to have been an easy way to reassure the NSA that the FBI was a part of Team USA like everyone else.

Sgt. Blane silently indicated that they needed to take down the party of six around the corner. There was no help for it: words needed to be spoken, and Blane let his deep voice slide directly into Don's ear. "You take the one on the farthest left, then drop to the floor so you don't get hit by strays. Don't miss." Pause. "Aim to kill. We don't have the time to play nice. On three." He moved on to whisper instructions into each of the others' ears, handing out assignments.

Blane moved himself into position, his automatic ready. He looked at his 'team', nodded to Ryan, and started the countdown.

The gunfire was deafening. Don had never been in combat, but some of the shoot-outs came close to the real thing. This was no different. When it was over, there were six dead bodies on the floor.

It had taken less than three seconds, total.

Blane allowed Don to move forward to investigate. First things first: yes, all dead and incapable of pulling a trigger in revenge on the way out of this life. Next: who were they?

Don turned one over and grimly recognized the visage. "Last time I saw this guy, he said his name was Smith. This one was Jones." He looked up at the others. "I'm looking forward to hearing what the fingerprints are going to tell us." He took another look. "Maybe not. These fingertips look like they've been burned with acid. We may not be able to get any clean prints from these men."

"Really? Lemme see." Ryan stooped down to take a look. He whistled quietly. "Looks like someone don't want us to know who these fellers are, screwin' around with their fingerprints like that." He straightened. "Think we'll have to do something to resolve this mystery."

"Leave it to me." Don was grim. He'd match his Forensics people against anyone in the country. Especially when they were trying to track down Charlie's murderer. _Especially_ then.

"We have a breather," Blane told them. He touched his radio, sending out a request for communication.

Three short squibs burst through.

"That was Dirt Diver," Blane informed them. "They've taken out three more. That's a total of sixteen, including our six." Blane sent back several more squibs: one long, followed by four short.

"How 'bout Betty Blue and Hammerhead?" Ryan asked.

As if in response, another voice came through. "Hammerhead."

"Snake Doctor here. I'm counting a total of sixteen pins down. Anything further?"

"Betty Blue is still doing his needlepoint along with the kissing cousin. Says it shouldn't be too much longer. Everything's quiet, Snake Doctor."

Don had to know. "Where's my brother?" Quietly. Meaning: where's the body?

Blane understood. "Hammerhead, need to know the location of the precious package."

"Understood, Snake Doctor." Pause for internal communication. Then, "The package was last seen on Level Green, Corridor Gamma."

"That's a roger, Hammerhead." Blane looked at Don, coming up with modifications to his plan on the spot. "Continue with previously established objective, then meet with us on Level Green, Corridor Gamma. I will inform Dirt Diver and Cool Breeze."

"Roger that, Snake Doctor. Level Green, Corridor Gamma."

Don waited for a translation. There was no Level Green in this facility, and clearly these men—these Special Operatives—had their own shorthand so as not to give away information.

"Third level," Blane told him, "Corridor D."

It made sense. That was close to where Charlie had been working; right outside his brother's work area, to be exact. The bomb had probably been dropped there on Foster's way out, and had taken out the entire area along with Charlie and Colby. It would be an easy way to derail Charlie's work and not get caught. Plan it right, and Foster could have left the bunker altogether to disappear into some part of the world on whatever reward someone had arranged for doing this. _Wonder how much a job as a traitor pays these days? Bet it pays more than being a math professor, or an FBI agent._

Then it hit Don. It _didn't_ make sense. It didn't make sense at all.

Charlie's dead body was located right near his work area. That was where Don would expect the body to be if Charlie had been working at the time, but Don had told Colby to get his brother out of there, on the double. Colby was not the type to stand around twiddling his thumbs, not when Don gave him an order with that amount of urgency. Colby would have bolted on the spot. Any backtalk from his brother and Charlie would have found himself tossed across Colby's shoulder being hauled out like a sack of Idaho potatoes.

Another thing: if Charlie was dead, why wasn't Colby also dead? Don knew his agent: any bomb blast headed their way, and Colby would have been shielding Charlie with his own body. Any collapsing roof would have hit Colby first. Don had just assumed that Hammerhead's 'kissing cousin' was Colby. What if it wasn't?

Don spoke up. "Sergeant, I need to know who the man is working on the power grid with your people."

"Sir?" Blane's attention was caught.

Ryan put in his two cents. "Son, we can't go puttin' out names across these radios."

"I don't need names," Don said, "but I do need identification. I need to know whether it's my man with yours, or Foster."

"It could make a difference?"

"It could make a difference." Don was certain.

"I'll make the call." Blane picked the radio back up. "Snake Doctor to Hammerhead."


	15. Cold 15 Numb3rs

"Snake Doctor, Hammerhead here. Response to query: one cousin only, foxtrot, sam, alpha. Repeat: one cousin only, foxtrot, sam, alpha—" The radio went dead. Blane looked up with surprise.

"'Foxtrot, sam, alpha'?" Don repeated. "What does that mean? What happened?"

Ryan took the lead on that question. Sgt. Blane tapped the radio, concerned with the broken communication that did not sound as though it had been deliberate on the part of his men, so Ryan instead answered Don's question with a question, still paying attention to his sergeant. "One of your men's last name start with an E or a G?"

Don didn't understand the purpose behind the question, but he knew the answer. "I've only got two agents here besides me: Sinclair here and a man named Colby Granger. With a G."

Ryan nodded. It fit. "Little bit of misdirection, Special Agent Eppes. Hammerhead was letting us know that the man down along with your consultant, according to the kissing cousin with Hammerhead and Betty Blue, was Granger."

Which would have been reasonable since Colby had been assigned to keep Charlie intact, but then the radio link went dead, which further suggested that the person with Ryan's people was either Foster or Schmidt. They were the only people free to wander around the bunker, and both of them were motivated to send out disinformation as much as possible. Which meant…

"That's right, Special Agent Eppes." Ryan was demonstrating his skill as an unhappy mind reader. "I suspect that my boys have their hands full right about now."

Don agreed. "They're either with Foster or Schmidt, who has just discovered that his cover has been blown."

The radio interrupted whatever else he had to say. Blane was on it in a flash. "Go ahead, Hammerhead."

"Snake Doctor, be advised that the kissing cousin's kiss is straight from Love Potion Number 9 and he has gone to spread his joy elsewhere."

"That's a roger, Hammerhead. Status?"

"Betty Blue says another ten minutes."

"Ten minutes it is, Hammerhead. Rendezvous at previously designated point after completing your objectives. Snake Doctor out." Blane clicked off the radio link, radiating satisfaction. He turned to Don with a tight smile. "I suspect, Special Agent Eppes, that reports of your brother's death were greatly exaggerated."

* * *

Saving his work took battery power, but not saving it frequently could be far more harmful to the end result. Charlie took a moment to watch the little pseudo-Einstein stuff a sheaf of papers into a file folder as an indication that the current work was now immortalized in electrons. Then he hit the enter button, telling the laptop to go ahead and plug in the multi-variate equations that he had just created and apply them to the cipher. The hourglass shape sprang into action.

Charlie waited. This wasn't going to happen any time soon. There were a lot of variables to work with and a lot of data, and the cipher wasn't easy. In fact, there was an equally high probability that his laptop would run out of juice before spitting out the answer—

Wow. Charlie breathed out softly: there it was. The answer. The results. Letters squiggled across the screen.

Uh-oh. There it was. The answer. The results. There were names, people that were not only connected to the terrorists but actively directing them.

Those names were scary.

Those names figured prominently in newspapers across the country, in political comedians' stand up routines, and were mentioned nightly on the six o'clock news.

* * *

It was slow going, but not one of them considered stopping. Army dude—his name was Sgt. Brown, Colby discovered, with a call sign of Cool Breeze—had designated himself as Colby's crutch and was helping the FBI agent to hobble along and would even pull Colby through a particularly tight tunnel that was all that was left of a corridor once the debris had finished filling it in.

They came to an intersection. Both ways looked clear, and Colby didn't think that it was because his vision was wavering. His leg still hurt, but the pain was numbing itself into oblivion and only flaring when Colby asked something of it, something like movement.

The red-headed one, the one who used the alias of Dirt Diver, paused to look back at Colby. "You got any suggestions?"

Colby had been a Ranger, and a damn good one. Carrying a map of his surroundings in his head was one of the first things that he'd ever learned, and after that funky time in that certain back alley of Kabul the map-thing had become second nature. He did it without consciously thinking about it. He blessed that habit right now. "Left heads toward the main entrance, toward the south face of the mountain. Right one heads toward the conference rooms, where the bomb went off. We're one level up."

Dirt Diver nodded. "We still have to find your assignment. Got any suggestions?"

"Anything that doesn't involve digging through this mountain?" Cool Breeze added wryly.

Colby tried to think. "I pulled him along, out of the work room where the computer banks were. Those should be just below us, maybe off to the left. The bomb was further on, and we had to retrace our steps to try to get away."

Cool Breeze considered. "Try to remember exactly what happened," he urged. "Think it through; take it from the top. You got the call from your commander."

"Yeah. No," Colby said, frowning. "I called Don. He didn't call me."

"Okay, you called him. Why?"

Colby pushed the signals his leg was sending skyward to the back of his brain. "I called Don. Things were getting hinky down here. Charlie was working—no, he wasn't." Colby got excited. It helped. "No, Charlie waited until Foster left the room, then he told me that the list that Foster gave him was a phony. I called Don, and that's when Don told me to grab Charlie and skedaddle."

"You left the work room." Cool Breeze wasn't telling him anything new, just moving Colby's thoughts along.

"Right. We went one way, I was thinking that it was the fastest way toward the nearest exit. Then I saw something that looked like a bomb, and it really was a bomb." The map inside Colby's head kicked in with a vengeance. "That was further down toward the left. I pulled Charlie away, and we started running down the hall toward the right, headed in the other direction." His face fell. "That's when the world caved in on us."

"Okay." Cool Breeze wasn't finished with him. "Slow down. I want you to think about what happened when the bomb went off. You heard a loud boom," he encouraged. "What next?"

"The lights went out." Colby tried to cooperate. "The bomb was only the first noise. Then the whole damn mountain started rumbling. I remember wondering if there were any nukes left in this place, that maybe we were gonna all turn into a mushroom cloud. Pretty crazy, what you think of at a time like that."

"There was a rumbling." Cool Breeze brought Colby back to the main objective. "What next?"

"Then the ceiling fell down on top of us. It felt like an earthquake." Colby tried hard to remember everything exactly. "I had hold of Charlie by the arm, but the ceiling caved in and I remember him getting pulled away from me. Chunks of cinder blocks fell on top of us. I heard him yell—I think one of the blocks trashed him—and then there was a whole wave of dirt that crashed down between us." Colby grimaced. "I'm not remembering a whole heck of a lot more. I think I blacked out somewhere in there. When I came to, it was with you guys hauling my ass out from underneath the mountain."

Dirt Diver squatted down beside him. "This is important, dude. We've got to find your package. Exactly where were you when you lost track of him? Where are we in relation to where you last saw him?"

Colby bristled at the thought of 'losing' Charlie. He damped down the emotion; it wasn't helpful, and besides: he'd saved Charlie's life by pulling him away from the bomb's immediate vicinity. Colby had nothing to be ashamed of. _Yes, I do; if I'd twigged onto Foster faster, I could have dumped that NSA dude's ass into the nearest trash can and we wouldn't be in this mess._

_Like how were you supposed to know?_

_Beside the point._ With an effort, Colby dragged himself back to the present, seeing the mental map in his mind's eye. "The corridor where I lost him is right below us. We were approximately fifteen feet closer to the bomb site than here, and down one level. We're close."

"Good." Dirt Diver stood up, casting very little in the way of a shadow in the eerie red emergency lighting. "Cool Breeze, let's see if we can find a way downstairs," he told his fellow soldier. He turned back to Colby. "Listen for anything that sounds like we should know about it."

"Like—?" Colby knew what to listen for, but couldn't resist the urge to torture himself.

"Oh, terrorists, bombs, or consultants. That sort of thing."

* * *

Just when, exactly, did Don Eppes lose control of this mission? Was it when the bomb went off? Maybe when the soldiers got locked into the conference room, watching the Dolphins lose to the Rams or vice versa? No, Don decided, the exact moment where this whole thing went down the toilet was the moment that Area Director D'Angelo had turned to the NSA guys in his office and told the world that the FBI was in charge of the mission. That alone should have told Don that he was in a heap of trouble.

Wait; it did. Don distinctly remembered having a mental conversation with himself along those lines. Didn't help.

Sgt. Blane, first in line, held up his hand. His white teeth gleamed in the dim red emergency lighting. "Hear that?"

"What?"

Satisfied nod. "The generators are now back on line. That, gentlemen, is the sound of progress as well as the welcome noise of the ventilators bringing fresh air into this mountain. Betty Blue, ably assisted by Hammerhead, have completed their preliminary objective."

"Good," was David's observation. "At least something is going right."

Ryan's voice had more humor in it than anyone ought to in this sort of situation. "Oh, I think you'll find that a number of things will improve dramatically, Special Agent Sinclair. At least, I certainly hope so and will continue my efforts on your behalf."

"Much appreciated," Don told him. Then—wait a minute. He held up his hand. He'd heard something else, something _not_ generator powered.

The other three froze.

No, not military experience, but Don had something equally as valuable: a hell of a lot of time spent tracking fugitives through the Badlands of New Mexico. He'd followed them in and around Albuquerque and then into the desert and to whatever hole in the ground they'd tried to hide in. It was the kind of experience where hearing just the littlest creak of a noise could spell the difference between success and failure—and life or death.

Crouch. Listen. Breathe through an open mouth, so that the merest whisper of air wouldn't interfere with what was trying to gently tap an ear drum. The automatics in the soldiers' hands were big and threatening, but right now Don blessed the handgun that he carried. It had less of a chance of banging against something, and Don knew that it would point and shoot as well as anything. And, with his brother somewhere in the vicinity, Don wanted something that didn't have a realistic possibility of spraying lead all over a room with a careless squeeze of a trigger. That noise up ahead could be from either a very scared mathematician or from a determined bunch of terrorists.

The sergeant was in front, so he took command of the situation. In deference to the non-army personnel, his hand signals were clearer than any that had gone before: you, on the right. You, on the left. Sgt. Blane gave Don the honor of proceeding. _So that there's less chance of shooting my brother by accident_, Don thought to himself, and was rewarded by a confirming nod from the sergeant.

Don eased himself forward. The noise repeated itself, and Don was able to determine more. It was from more than one corridor away, the light sequestered by three corners and two piles of tumbled down cinder blocks. To get to that point, they'd need to crawl on their bellies through a hall now less than two feet high.

Needed to be done. Don deciphered the noise into words, some sounding mildly English and another several in another language that Don had no interest in trying to identify at the moment. Linguistic classification could be left to the interrogators who would doubtless be descending as soon as they got wind of this.

No time. They needed to get closer, no matter what. There clearly were more of the enemy up ahead, people who needed to be taken into custody before they could do more damage. Don wiggled his fingers at the others, hoping that he was communicating enough information, and started sliding forward, gun in hand and trying not to disturb any of the pebbles that could cascade to the floor like carillon bells and warn the enemy soldiers that America was about to retake its property.

Later, Don would insist that he was moving silently, inch by inch, preventing noise from preceding them and that the other three were following suit. That happened for all of three yards. Then, just as Don was about to slide off of the rubble and onto a portion of the corridor that wasn't covered in rocks, he heard it.

"You won't get away with this."

Clear English, in a voice that he'd heard growing up, from a boyish falsetto through the pubescent cracking, into a man's voice that could easily lecture in any size room from small conference to oversize auditorium. The words were followed by something that Don instantly recognized as a fist striking bare flesh. The grunt that came after that only confirmed his fears: someone up ahead was being systematically beaten.

Shit.


	16. Cold 16 Numb3rs

Whoever had said 'I'll get there if I have to crawl' really didn't know what he was talking about, Colby grouched to himself. Crawling was the last thing he wanted to do. No, that wasn't even close to being right. The _last_ thing that Colby wanted was to be left out of the action and at the moment that seemed to be happening. The two soldiers, code names Dirt Diver and Cool Breeze, had left him behind for safe keeping while they scouted on ahead, confident that there wasn't anyone trotting up their collective ass with Colby's body there to shoot with a hell of a big noise to warn them about trouble. Colby was more than happy to admit that with a crunched leg he couldn't keep up with them—hell, even on a good day he'd be wishing he'd been a little more careful to put in time on a treadmill—but covering someone's six just wasn't in his nature.

Not in the cards. He sighed; with a little bit of luck he'd get close enough to observe these guys in action. Even that would be a tale to tell his grandkids, assuming that he lived to tell the tale.

_Big assumption, Granger_.

* * *

Col. Ryan pulled Don's arm back, putting enough force into it that Don had a choice of complying or making enough noise that the terrorists in the alcove in front of them would hear. 

Don let his eyes do the talking. _What the hell are you doing? We have to get him out of there! They're killing him!_

Ryan put his mouth to Don's ear. "Let Snake Doctor handle it, Eppes. Trust me on this one."

Don wanted to shout _not a chance!_ Don wanted to charge in there, guns blazing, taking down every damn one of those bastards that had destroyed this bunker and were torturing his brother and, by the look of him, David Sinclair was more than ready to back him up.

But something in Ryan's eyes held him back; that, and the knowledge that such an action had a better chance of leaving Alan Eppes alone in the world than with two sons walking out of this hellhole.

It hurt. It hurt worse than anything that he'd done in his life, but the cold and calculating FBI part of him came to the forefront and said: _wait_. It said, _let that tall sergeant with the build of a granite monument get your brother out of this mess because you can't and he can_. It hurt.

Don watched Blane look to the colonel with a question. The colonel stared back, trying not to understand. _Don_ understood. A blind man could understood the the glances that were being exchanged. Blane pushed. Long moment of indecision from the colonel, the look of _I know what I ought to do_ and _I know what I want to do, and they don't match_. Long and bitter sigh, and the colonel turned away. _Go ahead without me_.

Blane nodded without emotion. Decision made. It was time to act. Sgt. Blane gestured, and two more shadows slipped out of the dark background. Don's eyes narrowed: Mutt and Jeff. One tall and lean with the air of a striking hawk, the other short and cocky with enough skill to turn that attitude into reality. Both armed with deadly force and both looking to Blane for direction.

More silent hand signals, punctuated only by the sounds of fists striking undeserving flesh in the alcove beyond, grunts and yells being forced out of the poor slob in their grasp. Don clenched his own hands, trying to maintain the control that he would need. _Hurry up!_ Hand signals: Tall and Lean take the left, Short and Cocky the right. Blane would handle the front. More hand signals that Don couldn't decipher but that the four soldiers understood clearly.

Once more to the radio. "On three. Mark."

Three.

Two.

Even in the worst firefight he'd been in, Don had never heard so many shots fired so quickly, and the firefight had never been over so fast. Two seconds. Literally: two seconds, and it was done.

It was the longest two seconds of his life.

When it was over, several things had changed.

There were seven bodies on the floor, only one of whom was still breathing. His last gasp expired a moment after Ryan allowed Don to go forward. Blood bubbled onto the man's lips, his eyes already dimming as life slipped away, and Don couldn't find it in himself to be sorry.

There were now five soldiers in the room, all with smoking guns. Blane and his pair had been joined by two more from beyond, both looking as grim as the rest and just as deadly. Don didn't know where they'd come from and at the moment, it didn't matter.

And there was Charlie, still standing in the center of the area, shaking like a leaf.

In hindsight, in the back of his brain, Don recognized the tactic: hostage rescue through assault training, and it confirmed his suspicion. These were not simple logistical clerks earning a U. S. govt. issued paycheck. These were men who had trained long and hard for situations exactly like this one. How the hell had they gotten onto the scene?

No time for that. Don moved forward. "Charlie?"

His brother looked dreadful. Covered with dirt, a cut over one eye that was sporting a shiner worthy of a mixed martial arts fighter after the drubbing of his life—and that was just the top ten percent of him.

But he was alive. That was the important thing. He was _alive_.

Geniuses never did things like normal people. _Charlie_ never did things like normal people. Don knew that for a fact, had lived through it growing up. Now was no exception. At the moment, a normal person would collapse in relief, maybe babble inanely for a little while until the panic died away and rational thought could take over.

Not Charlie. Though his brother managed to continue to shake, the rest of him didn't cooperate with the rescued hostage routine. Big brown eyes lit upon his brother the FBI agent and the mouth started working. A less experienced FBI agent might dismiss the words as post-crisis babbling; Don knew better.

"Don! The code! I was able to integrate the post-Himmelman construct into the Wernicke Theorum, and the resultant responses fell into a fractal analytical pattern that correlated with the list of names." Charlie took hold of Don's arm for emphasis, unaware that his brother was already holding him up, leading him away from the scene. Charlie staggered, righted himself, and staggered again, all without realizing it.

How long before Charlie ran out of adrenalin, Don wondered. Would it last to get them all out of this mountain?

Charlie's surroundings started to puncture his thoughts; he looked around and realized that the soldiers with Don were not the soldiers that he'd met when he first arrived, straight from the debacle at his office. "Don…"

"Reinforcements, Charlie," Don inserted quietly, watching his brother closely. The collapse was close; it was going to happen soon. The only question was, what form would it take?

Time to move. Time to bring this little slice of life to a close. Time to leave. Don glanced around them. "Where's Colby?" And suppressed the wince at Charlie's shudder; his brother clearly was terrified that the young FBI agent was dead, crushed under the bombed out mountain rocks. Charlie's fingers clutched convulsively on Don's supporting shoulder.

One of the unknown soldiers spoke up. "We left him back a hundred yards or so. He's banged up, but he's okay."

Charlie sagged, tried to straighten himself. "Thank God," he whispered, then made another effort. This one succeeded a bit better. "Don, we need to talk." His eyes strayed to the unknown soldiers in their midst, and his eyes narrowed.

Don interpreted the look correctly. "They're safe," he told Charlie. "You can talk in front of them."

Charlie shook his head. "You don't understand, Don. I can't!" he whispered, agonized over the information that he possessed.

This wasn't making sense. Don tried to understand what was going through Charlie's head; not that he ever could, not really, but he could give it a try. "If you have the decoded message, we can turn it over to the NSA. We can go home, Charlie. It's over."

Charlie closed his eyes. "No," he said faintly, "not the NSA."

"Charlie—"

Col. Ryan stepped in. "Are you sayin' what I think you're sayin', son?"

Charlie focused on the man for the first time, really seeing who he was talking to; saw the face of a man who had fought battles both on the battlefield and in the proverbial boardroom. He looked around at the five soldiers who had accompanied the colonel, who had all just a moment ago walked into the alcove where Charlie had been trying not to give in to the terrorists and ruthlessly taken down seven men in less time than it took Charlie to calculate the first four decimal points of the square root of two.

But caution died hard. "Don…?" He turned to the one man that he had counted on for all of his life.

Charlie didn't think like other men, but that didn't mean that he was clueless. He knew the stakes here. He knew how important this was. His security clearance was higher than Don's. And if he didn't want to give the deciphered code to the NSA… Don sucked in his breath.

Ryan glanced at his watch. "Four AM. Whoever those names belong to, Dr. Eppes, I don't think they're going to be taking much action for another hour or two. I believe I saw a room down the hall that still had a few chairs and a table. What say we head there for the moment and talk this thing out?" Pause. "You look like sitting down might be the best thing right now."


	17. Cold 17 Numb3rs

There were chairs in the room that Col. Ryan had pointed out, but not many. Colby occupied one, his face drawn with pain and his leg elevated. Don had grabbed one for Charlie, knowing that his brother would be popping out of it at any moment to deliver his lecture and then would collapse back down once the spurt of adrenalin ebbed away. Most of the others stood.

Charlie, amazingly enough, still had his laptop. He'd had it when he'd been taken by the terrorists, and the machine had been put onto the floor for later use by the enemy. David had grabbed it before departing the alcove, unwilling to leave it behind with the seven still steaming dead bodies.

It didn't take long. Charlie wasn't delivering a long lecture this time on the intricacies of code breaking. He didn't wax poetical over Goshdarnit's Theory or Whatever's Conclusion. He simply named names.

It was bad.

Ryan whistled soundlessly through his teeth. "You're sure of this, Professor?"

"Yes." No equivocation. No weaseling about. Just lots of unhappiness.

"They made those appointments? They cut those deals? Be careful what you say, professor," Ryan warned. "We're talking treason, here."

"I'm aware of that, colonel," Charlie said testily, "and I am certain of the message in the code. The deciphering is accurate; there's a way that a message falls into place once it's decoded. If you're asking me if they actually performed those actions; no, I can't verify that. I can only attest to what that code said."

"And that, in itself, is bad enough." The words sounded even more ominous in the master sergeant's deep voice, Don thought. He grimaced; the words didn't need any help.

Charlie nodded. "So you see why I can't go to the NSA."

Don agreed. "Chain of command. Straight up the ladder. Everybody reports to somebody, and that's where it leads." He sighed. There was a lot of sighing going on, and this situation deserved a lot of it. "Question is: what _are_ we going to do?"

"Talk it out," Ryan advised. "Let's look at the ideas that we've got." He started with the obvious. "If you take it to your bosses at the NSA, it either gets buried or worse."

"Worse?" Charlie asked. "What could be worse than having this information buried in a file somewhere?"

Don knew better. "Having it get buried with you in your grave, Charlie," he told his younger brother.

Charlie swallowed hard.

"Right." Planning; this was Don's forte. He didn't like what he was doing, but he was damn good at it. At the moment, that was an asset. "Let's look at options: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Ideas?"

"We could take it to the media," David suggested. "Look at Deep Throat, in the Nixon administration."

Don shook his head, Ryan a moment later. "No good, David. They will have had plenty of time to prepare, and they've all learned from that episode in history. No, they have ways to combat that. Look at that CIA operative who got exposed not too long ago, her cover blown out of the sky. She tried taking the responsible people to court; even the trial was a farce: only one guy was tried and convicted, then pardoned real fast. There was obstruction going on like crazy; the prosecution was lucky to get as far as they did. Nope, the media is not an option. Not unless we all want to kiss our careers good bye, and then some. We'd be throwing everything away, and still wouldn't be able to bring anyone to justice." He jerked his thumb at Charlie. "I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to watching Charlie here get a Nobel Prize."

"They don't have a Nobel Prize in math," Charlie said faintly. Things were moving entirely too quickly for his comfort, and that was an unusual sensation for the genius.

"Whatever." Don waved that aside. "The point is, going public won't work."

"And has a decent chance of getting you killed," Blane pointed out. "'Accidents' happen."

"But this is the United States government," Charlie tried to protest. It wasn't working very well.

Ryan took pity on him. "Son, there's a reason that my unit was created. We're experts at making those 'accidents' happen. Trust me on this one, and don't ask for any more details."

Charlie shut up.

Don couldn't. "So where do we go from here? We can't report up, and we can't go public. Where does that leave us?" He answered himself. "That means that we can't report it at all."

"But we have to tell them something, Don," Colby said. He hadn't said much, but he was still listening, the lines of pain deeply etched on his face. "When we emerge from this bunker, they're going to debrief. We have to have answers."

Col. Ryan knew where Don was going. "Why?"

"Why?"

Ryan pursued. "Why do we have to have answers?" He turned to Charlie. "What your brother is saying, Prof. Eppes, is that this is going to be the one time in your career that you failed to decipher the code. For the record," and he rode ruthlessly over Charlie's opening protest, "you were not able to break it. And your laptop was lost under the rubble," he added, "unless you can figure out a way to wipe that section clean beyond hope of recovery. That possible, professor?"

"Theoretically—"

"Can you do it, professor?" Ryan pushed. "'Cause neither me nor any of mine can, not without destroying the laptop altogether. Too many chances of somebody a lot cleverer than me dredging the intel up from where you'd thought you'd erased it. Can you do that, professor?" he repeated.

Charlie's face fell. "No," he admitted. "Even when you delete, the information is simply stored in another part of the memory where it isn't accessible unless you know how to go after it. But I have a lot of important research on that hard drive," he protested, "research that it will take years to repeat. I can't lose that!"

"You're not going to," Don told him.

That was beyond Charlie. Multi-variate analysis he could do in his head, but this was beyond him. "Don?"

Don turned to his brother. "Look, Charlie; we don't have many options, here. Our best bet is to wait until after the next round of elections. Maybe then someone will be interested in a trial, but I wouldn't count on it. Right now we need to safeguard ourselves, and we can build in a little insurance doing it. We're going to go somewhere where we can make some copies of this information and you can make copies of your research as well."

Ryan agreed. "Then we bury that laptop. We bury it deep. I'm gonna be asking you for a copy of that data, Eppes. Me and mine will know where to put it so that it don't get into the wrong hands." He grinned wickedly; the expression had no mirth in it. "We'll know how to use it to make things go a little bit better for the world." _Blackmail, for a good cause_, hung out in the air above their heads.

"I was hoping that you'd ask for it, colonel." Don really hoped he was making the right decision. There was a country at risk, perhaps even the world, not just the dozen careers in this room; but watching those soldiers in action? They were patriots, and dedicated to the same principles that both Eppes brothers and David and Colby lived by. "Just in case they find it in _our_ hands." Another thought occurred to him. "Uh, you will make sure that any 'accident' we have gets thoroughly investigated?"

The tall sergeant chuckled, his deep voice echoing in the small conference room. "Not if they ask _us_ to arrange it."

* * *

Don wasn't certain if he liked the change in his brother or not. Before this whole piece of life destined to become history, Charlie was forever protesting that Don kept him wrapped in cotton, that Don wouldn't let Charlie do anything 'fun' which Don would always translate into 'dangerous.' Charlie had complained far too many times about needing to go to the scene of a crime, even one that hadn't been cleared for safety, had made a habit of blowing things up in his lecture hall with only a pair of flimsy plastic goggles between him and certain death and/or dismemberment. Oh yeah, and baiting the criminal underground was in there, too. 

Not now. His brother looked whipped. Yeah, he'd been through a lot, and the way he was hobbling along suggested that a quick trip to the local emergency department wouldn't be a bad idea. There had to be a lot of places under those ripped and dirt-drenched clothes that would welcome some heavy duty narcotics right about now. But that wasn't what Don was looking at. No, it was the way that Charlie hung his head that had his older brother most concerned. It was the fear that there was really no place to take the information that he'd decoded and have it used properly that was causing those shoulders to droop with more than just 'dismay'.

That was the one thing about math, Don thought. It was either right, or it was wrong. It either went with the odds, or it didn't. Any variation on that theme was simply an 'outlier' that could be explained as being that one chance in a million that didn't follow the pattern. There was no room in the universe for "no correct answer". There was only "we haven't found the answer yet. But we will."

None of that here. Here there really _wasn't_ an answer; at least, not one that was satisfactory. The people that Charlie was supposed to give the decoded message to couldn't be trusted. Okay, maybe not them, precisely, but the people that they reported to didn't necessarily have the best interests of the American people in mind. There was a really good possibility that the government system had been subverted for personal gain, and that wasn't sitting well with any of them walking along this broken down corridor toward the exit and the sun announcing daybreak.

Next best option: the message went nowhere for now. For the record, it couldn't be deciphered, despite the laptop being carried by Don himself that contained the answer encoded on the hard drive. That laptop, he mused, could possibly be the most dangerous thing he'd ever come across, and that included the time when he'd stumbled across a cache of M-16's in the New Mexico desert chasing after that gun runner who had bribed a guard into taking a fall from a prisoner transport vehicle. Each of those M-16's had been loaded, and Don still felt as though this laptop was the more dangerous weapon.

This was certainly a flimsy plan they'd settled on: hide the evidence. Not much of a plan, but there didn't seem to be anything better. Going public would be a great way to bring down wrath on their heads on the way to ridicule while their proof was buried and discredited in both legal and illegal fashions. They would have to find some way to protect Charlie from most of the interrogation that the NSA would surely be putting forward, Don decided. Don loved his brother but trying to think that the man could fake his way through an expert NSA question and answer session was sheer wishful thinking. No, Don needed to come up with a way to protect him from the worst of it, deflect the NSA and everyone else who would come knocking at Charlie's proverbial door.

His gut kept insisting that these soldiers, the five sergeants and their colonel, would be able to keep up their part in this. Rationally Don knew that he ought not to be trusting them. He'd known them now for all of two hours, and all he knew of the men was that they had arrived on his mountain-crunched doorstep and bailed his ass out of the tightest spot he'd ever been in. Look at Charlie's episode that got him here: it was looking more and more like that had been a scam to scare Charlie out of his office and into this mountain. This could be more of the same. Don didn't know who he could trust. So why did his gut keep telling him that these men were on his side?

Sigh. They _so_ did not pay him enough to make these kinds of decisions.

Their numbers were looking better. On the way out they'd stopped by the conference room that Lt. Bakker's men had been trapped in. Short and Cocky took one look, told the rest of them to stand back, and had all of Lt. Bakker's men out in no time flat with small and neatly shaped charge that didn't pull down the rest of the mountain around them. Col. Ryan had shrugged, a half-grin trying to appear, and said, "it's what he does. Don't question it. Just be grateful."

Don was. Gratitude was on the high side, but it wasn't uppermost. Getting the hell out of here was.

They got to the vehicle depot, hoping that the two vans and the two government-issued jeeps were still unharmed by the cave-in. Certainly the two vans were: both were sitting there, covered in mountain-style dust, one with a noticeable dent in the hood over the engine that wouldn't impair anything but its beauty. The hunk of mountain that had caused the dent was sitting off to the side, kissing the tire.

Both jeeps, however, were missing.

Private Mason was the first to notice. He pushed his way forward. "Hey, lootenant! The jeeps! Somebody took 'em."

Col. Ryan looked to Don. "Eppes?"

Don knew without even hunting down clues. "We have two people unaccounted for: the NSA agent Foster, and Pvt. Schmidt."

It made sense. "Two men, two jeeps. Doesn't sound like they're workin' together."

"Or they have a plan, with a half for each of them to carry out," Don reminded him grimly. "Either way, we're getting out of here." He raised his voice. Colonel Ryan may have been the ranking officer present, but this was still an FBI operation and Don Eppes was still in charge. _Oh, joy! _"Load it up and move it out, gentlemen."

* * *

The van was plenty wide, with easily enough room to fit half of the men in one vehicle and the remainder in the rest. Ryan had taken the wheel so that he could discuss tactics with Don, and Charlie was wedged in between with his laptop powered by the engine battery. One of Ryan's men had handed it to him after a short stop on the outskirts of town along with a stack of empty disks and a cord to hook the laptop to the van's battery for the additional power needed. It was only now just after dawn, and the stores weren't open, but obviously Blane and Williams had found some sort of all night store that happened to have computer toys as part of their inventory. _Right_. Don chose not to question that piece of luck. Charlie simply grabbed what was given to him, plugged it in, and started downloading the information from his laptop as fast as he could. Don knew what was important to Charlie: _all _of the data on that laptop. With imminent destruction facing his laptop, Charlie wanted to save everything he could. He especially wanted to save the recent research he'd done on Cognitive Emergence, Don could just bet. "Charlie, remember, you need to make a bunch of disks with the code on them. Code first." 

"I know, Don. I'm getting there."

"Well, get there a little faster, buddy. Let's set some priorities. I want a separate disk for every person here. Our lives may depend on it, Charlie."

Ryan exchanged a quick glance with Don, clearly wondering how much control over the consultant he had. Don shrugged, hoping that Charlie wasn't going to let him down in a rush of misguided main concerns. His brother hadn't said anything about how the disks had been obtained, and Don wasn't about to push the issue. Don himself had a pretty good idea and, despite being an officer of the law, chose to ignore it. _Higher cause, and all of that_.

Ryan turned the wheel, guiding the van into the entranceway leading to the resort that he and his men were staying at. Don recognized the roads from the maps he'd been given; this was the place that had been tasked with supplying food for his troops, the source of those incredible buffalo wings that he'd scorched his tongue yesterday afternoon—was it really only yesterday? Ryan let the van slow to a crawl, even put on a little braking action.

Don thought that was a very good idea. Any resort, at six in the morning, shouldn't look like this. A resort that was capable of basting buffalo wings to that level of heat especially shouldn't look like this. Considering that this was their destination, Don felt some significant misgivings.

The resort building was big, with two wings that he could see and, he suspected, two behind that were out of sight that boasted unobstructed views of the wooded forests beyond. There was a tennis court off to the left and a basketball court beside it. The grounds were as manicured as the encroaching fall weather would allow, small evergreens chopped into fanciful shapes and the last of the mums turning from orange into dried brown. A grove of maples proved the advantage of red over green by hanging onto the leaves a bit longer than the trees around them.

That was the good part.

The bad was pretty obvious.

Don was going to leave it to Forensics to decide whether the front entrance, all three sets of double doors, had been blown up with a bomb or simply smashed in by a vehicle declining to use appropriate braking maneuvers. Either possibility looked reasonable. Glass shards littered the front with a few hundred bullet casings. Don never considered himself an expert, but the years had given him more than a little knowledge in evaluating crime scenes. Someone—more likely several someones—had arrived with a few automatic rifles and assaulted the resort in the not so distant past.

Given the circumstances, Don was more than willing to believe that this debacle had something to do with the one twenty miles up the street in a ruined concrete bunker. It wasn't the same people involved—all of whom, present company excepted, were dead—but they probably hung out at the same corner bar and spoke the same language and had the same ideals. The big question was: what now?

He turned to Col. Ryan, no humor in his voice. "Nice place for a vacation. Come here often?"

"Not a coincidence," Ryan grunted grimly. "Agent Eppes, I'm gonna ask you and yours to take a step back for a moment, let me and mine take a gander."

"Be my guest."

"Thank you." Ryan applied the parking brake but left the engine running as he slid out of driver's seat and onto the ground beside the van. "Keep Bakker's boys in the back quiet but ready. If you hear something loud and dangerous, tell 'em to come in running. You keep a handle on your consultant and do whatever seems best at the moment, even if it means turning tail and running. No matter what, that information your consultant has come up with needs to remain intact. We clear on this, Special Agent Eppes?"

Don nodded. This had turned back into the military man's world. But first, one more thing. "Charlie? How many disks have you down-loaded so far?"

"Three."

"Good. Give them to me." Don handed the three disks over to Col. Ryan. "Let's keep things spread out."

Ryan accepted the three disks. "Give us twenty minutes, and if nobody reports back to this location, you skedaddle." He turned to the rest of his men who had already jumped down out of the two vans. "Move out."


	18. Cold 18 Numb3rs

"I find this hard to believe, Eppes," Col. Ryan told Don.

The story that Ryan and his men had brought back was not good. Some twenty men, yelling in a language that one survivor had identified as Arabic and another as Farsi, had attacked the resort just befor dawn. It had been short and ugly; there were now four dead soldiers, three dead hotel staff workers—and six people had been taken hostage.

Charlie heard Ryan's words in the back of his mind. It was the typical story, and it was getting old. Whatever outsider Don had to work with never believed in the power of statistical analysis until Charlie literally rammed it down their throat. It would be nice to think that the army had a bit more sense, but apparently the concept of numerical consistency was foreign to all human brains except for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers of various stripes.

They'd pulled the Charlie and everyone else inside the devastated building, which was a relief to everyone. For the soldiers, it meant better cover. For Charlie, a chair with soft padding was definitely welcome after the last few hours spent crawling through a bombed out bunker, getting turned into human jelly by the bombers, and then traveling in a van designed for hard work instead of comfort. Colby and Lt. Bakker had been put in one of the guest rooms with a medic for the time being. Don and Col. Ryan had talked over sending the pair to the local hospital, and grimly decided against it. That would be a clear signal to whoever was orchestrating this mess that things weren't going quite as planned. The inhabitants of the 'abandoned' bunker in the mountain weren't supposed to have survived the 'earthquake'. Neither man was so badly off that they couldn't wait. Col. Ryan locked down the resort; no one in or out and, more importantly, no information in or out.

As soon as he could, Charlie pulled Don aside. "Don," he hissed, "I can find those hostages."

"What?" Don's attention was caught, as Charlie knew that it would be. "You can? How?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Don grimaced. "Never mind. Don't answer that. You can do this?"

"I can," Charlie affirmed, brown eyes large and determined. "I can work some probabilities analyses around distances, road conditions, need to remain in contact with Col. Ryan and his men for negotiations; that sort of thing. I just need some maps. And my laptop."

"You've got it," Don promised. "David? Can you find some maps of this place?"

One of Ryan's men spoke up. "Already got them." He handed over a folded piece of paper.

Charlie unfolded it, saw the download of a local map that the man—Sgt. Brown, he thought—had used to pull Charlie and Don and the others out of the bunker. He turned his full gaze onto Sgt. Brown. "Thank you," he told him, meaning more than just the map.

Brown's own eyes were haunted, and Charlie realized one more item: one of those hostages was Brown's wife. It only doubled his resolve to give these men the clues they needed to rescue the women who had been pulled into this mess. In a very real sense, those wives wouldn't have been placed into danger if it hadn't been for Charlie himself. No Charlie, no mission in a bunker, no danger…

He spotted the large pad of paper on an easel; standard equipment for a conference room where businessmen drew pictures and simple outlines to illustrate their points. It wasn't a white board, but it would do in a pinch for sketching out the thoughts in his head. "I need that," he told Don, trying to push himself out of the chair. It was slow going; everything hurt. And then hurt some more.

"Sit," Don insisted. "I'll bring it over to you."

"I need to stand," Charlie told him. "I think better on my feet."

"Charlie—"

"Don." Charlie stared him down. It wasn't easy, sitting in a chair and looking up at his brother, but somehow Charlie managed it.

"Charlie—"

"Don." Quietly. With certainty. This was what Charlie could do, and he knew best how to do it. If it meant ignoring the various bruises, it would be a small price to pay to thank these soldiers who had just saved his life. He would do it, no matter what.

Don gave in, accepting the large pad and easel that David dragged over, helping to position it in front of Charlie. He hooked an arm underneath Charlie's shoulder, ignoring the hiss that his brother couldn't quite conceal, helping him to stand.

It seemed to go as fast as anything Don had seen Charlie do on his computer. Numbers and Greek letters flashed onto the large white paper, only to be ripped down and a second set, more focused, applied in a second color of marker. One line connected one set of equations, then another, and a third. Circles surrounded various factoids, sectioning them off into correlations that only Charlie could see. Then the computer got involved, adding additional geographical details, and moving on to solving the multi-variate equations that Charlie plugged in. Then--

"I've got it." Again: quietly, with certainty.

"Charlie?"

"All...I have to do...is let the computer..." Charlie's voice drifted off.

Drifted off, not in a good way. "Charlie?" Don started to get alarmed. "Charlie, you okay?"

Charlie turned his head slowly, entirely too slowly. He frowned, his gaze unfocused. Don could see his brother's eyes starting to roll back into his head, watched as beads of sweat popped out on his brow. Watched him begin to sag. "Charlie!" Don leaped forward in time to catch the man, one of the soldiers right along side of him.

It was Short and Cocky. "Head down," the soldier ordered, sounding like he knew what he was talking about, helping Don to wrestle Charlie into one of the chairs. "Take some deep breaths. You just pushed it a little too hard, professor."

Charlie groaned. "Computer..." he begged.

"Charlie--"

"Time factor," Charlie gasped. "Gotta..."

"Take a sip of cold water, professor." Short and Cocky held it to Charlie's lips, Don steadying his brother's hand.

Charlie shuddered, letting the shock of the cold liquid bring him back to his senses. Then he pushed them away, reaching for his laptop. "No time."

Don took over, reached the laptop for him and pulling it closer, still holding his brother up. Charlie once again ignored everything around him, putting all of his strength into tapping the keyboard in front of him.

Then it was done. Charlie slumped wearily back in the chair, looking as pale as the white linens on the side table, closing his eyes in sheer exhaustion. "It's finished. You'll have the answers in a few seconds." Which was when Col. Ryan, as had many before him, questioned the accuracy of the statistically significant prediction.

Don came through. All the times that Charlie had spent explaining math to his older brother were finally paying off. Don folded his arms and spoke up in defense of his brother. "Yeah, there have been times when Charlie has to work to convince me, too. Trust him. If he says that he can figure out where that truck is, then he can do it."

"I can't figure out _exactly_ where the truck is," Charlie told them wearily, his attention still on the computer which was valiantly trying to multi-task by both churning out disks and completing the calculations demanded of it by its beloved master. "All I'm doing is giving you the greatest likelihood of its position, based on variables such as time elapsed, topology, characteristics of engine speed…" He drifted off. "Hah."

"Hah?"

"That's Charlie-speak for 'I've got the answer'," Don interpreted. "Results, Chuck. Now."

Col. Ryan peered over Charlie's shoulder as he pointed to a spot on the map that he'd pulled up on his computer. Charlie opened his mouth. "Here. Eighty-four percent probability of the truck being within half a mile of this location for the next ten minutes."

"Which means we hustle, gentlemen," Ryan said. Charlie smiled grimly to himself. Whether Ryan and his men believed in his math or not, they were willing to use it—at least, until something better came along. The lead might not pan out, but it was better than sitting here waiting for something else to go wrong. Ryan looked at his watch and spoke to the other officer in the room. "Petersen, you keep your people under wraps right here. Provide security for these nice Federal agents. Do whatever they tell you to do. Clear?"

"Yes, sir." Petersen may have been a lieutenant colonel, but he knew an order when he heard it and he knew when things were well above his pay grade.

Don wasn't finished, either. "David," he instructed, "stick closer to Charlie than marmalade on toast. Keep our soldiers from the bunker close by; they've already been vetted and cleaned by Megan."

"Got it, Don. Where'll you be?"

"Yes," Col. Ryan put in, "where will you be, Eppes?"

Don stared the colonel down. Charlie was impressed. It was like staring down the throat of an irritated Kodiak, but Don was doing it without blinking an eye. "With you, colonel. Or have you forgotten that this is a Federal case? I have jurisdiction; you don't. You need a Federal agent along with you to make whatever arrests are warranted."

Sgt. Blane moved in, went for looming, and he was taller than Charlie's brother by several inches. Deep voice: "What makes you think, Special Agent Eppes, that there is going to be anyone around for you to arrest?"

Don was used to standing his ground and he was used to handing it back to those who deserved it. "Because, Sgt. Blane, there needs to be someone to interrogate. Someone with a few answers who hopefully can't get lost in the system or shut up by someone higher in government circles once the ACLU gets wind of them." He jerked his thumb at Charlie. "That code that Charlie broke? That can get hidden under a classified label. It's a little bit harder with a living, breathing suspect who ought to have rights under the Constitution, someone with nothing to lose and eager to shove egg into a deserving face." He folded his arms. "_That's_ why _I'm_ going to the scene of a possible kidnapping, with support in the form of the 303rd Logistical. That clear enough for you?"

No smile. "Clear enough, Special Agent Eppes."

* * *

They took two jeeps, one belonging to Sgt. Grey and the other commandeered from one of the other soldiers still holding the fort/resort. Don found himself squashed between the door and Sgt. Brown, both of whom were as solid as the granite boulders they were passing on the bare excuse for a road. He hung onto the bars, mimicking the others, his handgun heavy in its holster. They came to a stop in a glade close to the point that Charlie had identified for them on the map as the most likely place for the group to hole up. It looked as though these soldiers weren't willing to take a chance on being spotted, and Don approved. It was only dawn; it was likely that the terrorists wouldn't realize that they'd been spotted for a while. 

Blane turned to his men, already waiting in a semi-circle for Blane to direct them. Col. Ryan had delegated the mission planning to Sgt. Blane and his team because he knew that they were the best at what they did. That was part of the rules: plan your own mission. _If you're going to get your ass shot off, do it because it was your screw-up, not some armchair tactician's_. Ryan had been clear on that.

Not that it made much difference. The amount of planning possible was directly proportional to the amount of available intel, and right now there was precious little of either. All that Charlie had been able to give them was an eighty-four percent probability of this being the location where the terrorists had stopped for a cigarette and a quick workshop in 'How To Make a Pipe Bomb on the Fly'. Pretty good odds, but right now Don wanted something more in the range of one hundred percent.

He let his thoughts drift back to the resort, to his consultant, trying not to worry about his kid brother. Charlie had looked pretty bad when he'd finished cranking out the numbers. A fire cracker, that's what he was: flaring into the sky and exploding with brilliance, then mere ashes falling back down to the ground. Right now, Charlie was ashes. Ashen ashes.

_"Don." His brother looked smaller than usual, dark curls nestled upon the white linens. If there was one good thing about holing up in a resort, it was that there were plenty of beds available, and Don and David had literally carried the man to this one once the computer had finished its chores. Charlie swallowed hard, eyes big and scared. "Don, be careful."_

_Don sat on the edge of the bed. He smoothed some of those curls out of Charlie's face. Mom used to do that, he remembered. "Hey, I'm always careful." _

_Weak snort. "Get real."_

_Don reached for the water glass, pushed some into his brother, trying not to let on how nervous it made him seeing Charlie's hand shake with exhaustion, wondering if he needed to reconsider the hospital decision. "Besides, I'll be with some of America's finest. What could be better?"_

_"Don." Charlie was serious. "Those aren't just any soldiers, and you know it. You could get killed trying to keep up."_

_Don nodded. Charlie was scared. Truth be told, Don was more than a little worried himself. "You're right, Charlie, but this is something that has to be done. This is a kidnapping, with hostages, and we need a Federal presence. We need to try to get someone into custody who might be able to talk at a trial."_

_Charlie remembered just in time not to bite his lip with fear; that lip was swollen and bloodied, courtesy of a dead terrorist back in a collapsed bunker. His good eye was slowly closing, unable to stay open any longer. The other was already closed and black and shiny. "Just...stay safe, Don." He lost the battle for consciousness._

_Don couldn't resist reaching for Charlie's wrist, reassuring himself that the pulse still beat and that his brother, beaten and bloodied, was still in there. "I will, buddy," he whispered. "I will."_

He looked around. If Charlie was correct, then that pipe bomb workshop was currently in session in that boarded up mansion over there. It was the only building even close to the position he'd marked out for them, and the only place that would accommodate the needs of the kidnappers. Open ground wouldn't do it; these people needed a hole to hide in.

The group of seven approached it on foot, the jeeps left far enough away so as not to be seen. Fifty years ago, Don decided, it had probably been the home of one of the town fathers; a doctor, perhaps, or even the local district judge. It had seen better days. Today it had boards nailed over all of the windows on the first floor and several on the second and third, and the wrap-around porch no longer wrapped around the portion of the house that it was supposed to. Tall grass surrounded the place except for the bare spots of hardened dirt. White paint peeled from every clapboard, revealing two layers of other colors made dingy by the weather before exposing the wood to the elements.

There was no need for voices. Sound would have posed an unnecessary risk. Blane gave his orders with his hands: _Gerhardt, Williams, scout around either side, see what you can find. Report back._

Two shadows ghosted off, barely able to be seen in the early dawn light.

They waited, not moving a muscle, hiding in the grove of leafless white birches, watching the mansion for signs of habitation, something to tell them that Charlie had, against all common sense, nailed the position. Don could read every man's thoughts: it didn't seem possible that a few statistics could pull this particular rabbit out of the hat, but Don had seen it happen more than once. He'd staked his professional reputation on it more than once. Ryan had been convinced. Therefore, the mission went forward.

Don continued to study the six men that he was with, studying them as hard as he was the target building. One colonel, and five sergeants. He'd heard about these, Special Ops types, men who went places where no one dared and came back with whatever booty their masters had commanded them to retrieve. Every one of them handled a gun as though it was part of their hands. Don considered himself good at tracking, but these soldiers made him feel like a three year old in a sand box. Even their colonel, apparently out of the field for some time, had an iron spine that told Don that he'd have to be on his toes to keep up.

The two soldiers returned as silently as they'd left. Sgt. Gerhardt spoke first.

"They're in there," he said grimly. "Heard 'em talking. Jabbering in something I couldn't quite make out. Middle Eastern, though."

"Farsi," Sgt. Williams clarified. "One of the up country dialects, broad enough and quiet enough that I couldn't tell what they were saying. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Ryan, colonel."

"She all right, Williams?"

"She has a bruise on her cheek, but I didn't see anything else. She was in the back room—the kitchen, I think—tied to a chair. She's not going anywhere. Not yet."

"Anyone else?" That was Brown. Don was impressed. He wasn't certain that he'd have been able to keep his voice from shaking in similar circumstances.

"I couldn't see anyone else. I had a hard enough time seeing Mrs. Ryan," Williams reported. "I heard Ainsley in the background, talking to the kidnappers. I may have heard Mrs. Gerhardt; I'm not certain."

"How many?" Blane was already planning the rescue.

Williams was not happy. "No way to tell. A lot. More than six, probably not more than twenty."

"Definitely less than twenty," Gerhardt told them. "Footprints show somewhere around eight to ten of them, plus the wives. Plus Ainsley."

"Layout of the house?"

Gerhardt started drawing in the hard dirt, using a twig that broke and replacing it with a stouter version. "Entranceway. Parlor to the left, dining room to the right. Some sort of sitting room behind the parlor where some of the women are being kept along with Ainsley. Kitchen in the other corner, got a door with a knob that's about to fall off. Hinges look like they'll squeak all to hell and back."

Williams took over. "This wing on the right is empty. Looks like it used to be some sort of indoor greenhouse. Now it's filled with trash. Don't go through there, Top. One of us will trip over something and alert the world."

"And all the windows are boarded up," Blane mused half to himself, half-hoping that someone would come up with an idea. He tossed a glance toward the house, looking for inspiration. "Second floor?"

"There's a tree over there," Brown started to say, when Don interrupted him. There was an avenue that these soldiers weren't automatically aware of.

"Look, I know this is going to over like a lead balloon, but I need to put it out there. I've done some hostage negotiations, colonel. I've seen better, but I'm not too shabby." Don tried to assume a position that radiated confidence.

"Thank you, Special Agent Eppes, but I don't think that talking to these guys is going to be particularly helpful." Colonel Ryan stayed calm, and Don was grateful. Some soldiers could be hot heads, but apparently Ryan and his men weren't that type. Then again, Don reflected, if they were then they wouldn't have been chosen for this particular unit. Ryan continued, "those men inside are terrorists, and would be just as happy to change their designation to suicide martyrs."

"Which is exactly why talking to them is the best option." This really was more along Don's lines of expertise, but out-numbered six to one and needing their support, Don needed to gain their cooperation. With several wives of these men as hostages, this was going to be the tricky part of the hostage negotiations. If Don got through this discussion alive, then dealing with the terrorists should be a comparative walk in the park. "How many are there inside? Eight? Ten? How many do you think you can take out before they start shooting back and the hostages get in the way? The moment you open fire, there are going to be six dead people in there."

Several stony faces stared back at him, fingers whitening on guns.

But not Sgt. Blane's. His face was thoughtful. "You have a point, sir." He looked Don directly in the eye. "Tell me straight up: how good are you really?" He paused. "My wife's life depends on your answer, Special Agent Eppes."

Don was ready. "As I said, I'm good. I'm not the best, but I'm good. I've led my own team for a number of years now, and I ran my own office in New Mexico." He too paused. It was time for honesty. These soldiers had hauled his bacon out of the fire, and they deserved to know exactly what they were working with. "I've done hostage negotiations more than once. Some I've won, others I've lost."

Gerhardt pushed in, fear shoving pugnacity into his voice. "That's my wife in there too, Eppes. You think you can talk her out of their hands?"

"Do you think going in, guns blazing, will get her out in anything other than a body bag?"

"I think it's a whole hell of a lot more practical than trying to talk sense into a bunch of fanatics—"

"Keep it down, sergeant," Col. Ryan ordered. "Jonas, what's your opinion?"

The options weren't good, and Sgt. Blane let that fact reflect in his expression. "We don't have a lot of choices here, and none that are particularly good. Let's see if we can't put together one plus one and come up with three."

Don frowned, but it was for show. He'd won. "Isn't that my brother's line?"


	19. Cold 19 Numb3rs

Waiting. Don had never considered himself particularly good at waiting, but the people around him had always begged to differ. There was that episode way back when, waiting for the fugitive to stick his nose outside his den during his time in Fugitive Recovery, and then there was the time that he needed to squash one of the junior agents while he was running the little office in New Mexico and all he needed to do was to wait long enough for the guy—what was his name? John? Joe? George? Something like that? Don couldn't remember—wait long enough for the guy to hang himself with stupidity. Waiting had been the best option then, and it was now.

So Don continued to wait, Sgt. Brown at his side, both hunkered down in a small chunk of bushes surrounding a large boulder that would serve as a really nice shield should things not work out the way that Don was desperately hoping that they would.

Other things were happening, things that were intended to bring this little episode to a satisfactory conclusion. All Don could do was to wait beside the sergeant who was likewise waiting with a lack of movement that this boulder would envy, wait for his turn to come. Then Don would see if he was as good as he was supposed to be.

Things happened quickly.

The little squirt of radio static came through. Sgt. Brown went tense: it was time. He nodded to Don, and moved swiftly away to another area along the tree line. The goal would be to make the terrorists inside the boarded up house think that they were surrounded. Actually, Don thought, the goal was really to drawn them to the front of the house so that the soldiers in the back could storm in and rescue the hostages from behind.

This was Don's part of the rescue operation. He gave the sergeant a three count to position himself, then stood up from behind the boulder that protected him.

"Federal agents!" he yelled, wishing for a loudspeaker. A booming voice would have sounded a lot more convincing. "FBI! You, inside the house! Come out with your hands in the air!"

_Yeah, that got their attention_. Voices started screeching inside, and little holes in the boarded up windows got poked out with snub-nosed barrels stuck through. Bullets flew; Don ducked behind the boulder to let the granite take the brunt of the lead pellets zipping through the air like hornets on speed. In the background he could hear Sgt. Brown taking a shot or two, nothing wasteful, just enough to make the kidnappers inside think that there was a whole flock of Feds surrounding the plane.

Wait—there it was. Another sound, still bullets but a different caliber. Don smiled grimly to himself. Yes, the plan was going forward. Was it working? No way to tell, not at this point. Actually, yes there was: Brown. The soldier was still calmly firing away, putting a bullet into this boarded up window, another into the door. Slowly, methodically, shredding away the protection into the front parlor at the front of the house. If this went bad, they would need to storm the building, and that meant getting inside as quickly as possible. It also meant crossing the open area in front of the mansion with bullets aiming for Don's head. So Don watched the sergeant carefully. As long as the man was shooting, there was action going on inside the house, which meant that hostages were being rescued.

Then: a lull. No more shots fired. A deadly sort of silence descended on the scene, at odds with the rising sunshine creeping through the tree line and onto the front lawn thick with weeds.

What was going on? Don looked at Brown for an answer. The sergeant put his hand to his ear, listening. He held up three fingers, and Don tried to interpret what that meant. Three hostages dead? Three rescued? Maybe he meant that Don should be ready to storm the place on the count of three.

Nope: three rescued. One of the other soldiers—Williams, Don thought he remembered—was hustling three women along the edge of the trees, running crouched over, headed for where they'd left the jeeps and escorting them to safety.

Only three, which meant three more still left inside. That made sense; if the hostages had all been freed, then Don had no doubt that there would be no one left for him to arrest. This was still a very dicey situation.

What next? Their plan didn't cover this. It only covered getting hostages out, and that task hadn't been completed. What was going on inside? Without better intel from the men on the spot, Don didn't dare act.

The terrorists made the next move. One kicked out a large hole in the door. It wasn't hard; Brown had already torn large chunks of wood off the ancient nailed on boards. Don readied himself.

Best shield in the world: a hostage. Don could see the terrorist behind the young woman being pushed out through the door. Pretty thing, he'd remember later, with short brown hair, still dressed in some sort of baby doll pajamas which gave her absolutely no protection against either the cold morning air or her captor. Which soldier did she belong to? Don had absolutely no clue, and it didn't matter one iota. His handgun was rock steady in his hand, focused on the tableau.

The terrorist yelled out, "Back off! Back off!" His English was heavily accented, but still clear as to his intent.

Rolling eyes, gun to the hostage's head? Oh, yeah, Don was backing off. He held his gun up into the air, his other hand following suit. This was not the moment to push. "Backing off," he called out. "Guys, pull back. Look, we're backing away." As if there were any other agents here. "Don't hurt her. Nobody needs to get hurt, here." Trying for calm. Don glanced around. Brown had also pulled back. Don could no longer see the soldier.

Couldn't spare the attention to wonder where the sergeant had gone to. Needed to concentrate on the kidnapper in front of him. The woman had tears in her eyes, one droplet already trickling down her cheek in a salty rush, but wasn't making a sound. _Got two more hostages inside, can't afford to piss this bastard off. _

The kidnapper kept control of the situation. "I want car now!" he yelled at Don, grammar flying away with his fear.

"We can do that," Don promised, trying to calm the man. The gun was nestled snugly against the woman's head, her dark hair shoved aside by the barrel. "Just let her and the others go. You can have the car. It's a mile down the road," he lied. "It'll take time to get it." Time to stall. Time for three hostages to continue to take breaths of air. Where the hell was Brown? If it had been a Federal agent, the sergeant would even now be aiming at the head of the terrorist, waiting for either Don to give the signal to shoot or for the terrorist to make that final move toward the trigger.

Too close, too close. The man's finger was already half-cocked. Even if Don or anyone else could shoot, that finger would jerk and the gun would go off and the world would be out one more victim to senseless violence. Somebody had to keep it under control, and that somebody had to be Don. "The car is down the road," he repeated. "We can go get it." He kept his hands in the air, the gun glinting in the morning sun, edging his way forward. "Let the woman go. We can work this out."

"Bring car here." Another desperate glance inside. The kidnapper, still holding the woman's arms behind her and the gun to her head, inched closer to Don and escape.

"We're doing that," Don lied. He tossed a shout artistically over his shoulder. "Hey, Colby! Get the car! Bring it here!" Knowing that there would be no response. Just another way to buy a second or two of life. "It's just you and me, guy. We can work this out. Let her go. You don't need her."

The kidnapper was growing more desperate. Don could tell. Methodically, he assessed the man: short, perhaps only five foot seven or so. Light-skinned, but with liquid brown eyes that proclaimed his heritage. Fingernails well-trimmed; this was a man who cared about his appearance and, by extension, himself. The tee shirt was torn and dirty but Don was willing to bet that the filth had been acquired in the last twelve hours and not by choice.

Time to up the ante. Don took a step forward, his hands still in the air to disarm the man's fear. "Look, guy; you're not getting out of here. I've got men everywhere, and the moment you set foot in that car"—still lying through his teeth, and he'd do it again if he had the choice—"the moment you drive off, you're going to have a dozen Federal agents tracking you down." Not to mention the half dozen highly pissed Special Ops soldiers that are currently surrounding this place. "You want to live? Put down the gun and surrender. I guarantee that you aren't getting out of here any other way. You put down the gun, and I'll see that you live."

"I kill her first." The terrorist shoved the gun closer to the woman's temple, pushing out a tiny squeak. "I kill her!"

But Don had seen the crack. The man was tired, had been up all night at the disaster known as the collapse of the mountain bunker, and the adrenalin was all used up. There wasn't much left in him.

There wasn't much left in Don, either; nothing left but a hell of a lot of determination. He kept his voice persuasive. "That's not going to get you anything. You kill her, what do you get? A swift trial and an execution. And I guarantee you that there won't be any press. Nobody will know what you've done. You won't be a martyr; you'll be a nobody. You'll just disappear."

"I kill her." All the creativity had been used up. The terrorist couldn't think of any variation on his theme.

"Listen to me: you give yourself up, you go to jail where the media can still hear about you. The _world_ hears about you; you and your cause." Don tried to make himself sound reasonable. "Think about what you want. Is disappearing what you want? Or do you want the world to hear about you?" _Keeping talking, Special Agent Eppes. Think about all those damn classes that you took at Quantico, all those instructors talking about how to negotiate with different types of hostage-takers. There were scared ones, bitter ones, desperate ones—all needing different techniques and some needing several of those techniques all at once. You aced that course, Special Agent Eppes, or you would have if you'd have been able to negotiate with the terrorist AKA the lead instructor. What was the instructor's name? Breakstone? Yeah, his course could break something, all right._

This was a tired one, with a side order of fanaticism. Don could use that. He softened his voice. "How about it? Give me the gun. I'll guarantee that you walk out of here alive." First honest thing he'd said.

It was the right thing. The terrorist's hand drooped and with it, his gun. Not far, just an inch or two. Still close enough to do plenty of damage, but the trigger finger eased off.

_Blam!_

Don had been concentrating so hard on the negotiations that he almost didn't identify the shot. Another bullet had been fired inside the boarded up mansion.

The terrorist heard it. His hand flashed back up, finger back on the trigger. It was time to go out in a blaze of glory.

No choice. No better option. No time to think, only time to hope that he was faster than the captor in front of him.

Don's hand was still on his own handgun, and his finger on its trigger. The barrel came up in line with the dark brown eye that he'd assessed only seconds before. The trigger was pulled before Don realized that his brain had given the signal to fire.

His shot mingled in with the sounds of gunfire within. Don didn't hear it; couldn't hear it, still watching the terrorist jerk and collapse in front of him. No time for conscious thought; Don grabbed the woman by the arm, yanking her away from where any bullets would be coming from, dropped them both to the meager cover of the overgrown weeds. He crouched down, covering her.

The gunfire stopped. For the second time in five minutes, the gunfire stopped.

Don heard racing footsteps. He whipped around, gun at ready.

It was Sgt. Brown, racing in with his automatic carried as lightly as if it was a feather. "Kim?" he asked in desperation.

"Bob!" The woman that Don had rescued pulled away to run to Sgt. Brown. One arm still cradling his gun, the sergeant dragged his wife into a frantic embrace.

For the millioneth time, Don wished that there was someone in his life who would look at him like that.

* * *

Don took a look inside the mansion. He needed to; he'd need to put something in this report that he would be writing. There was going to be damn little of it: _We took possession of a bunker and let it get bombed out. The consultant wasn't able to decipher the code. We rescued hostages but all the kidnappers were killed in the ensuing gunfire, leaving no one to corroborate our story_. 

He looked around. The place looked as though it had been abandoned for at least fifty years with three inches of dust having been swirled back into the air by all the recent action. Don stifled a sneeze; it would only stir up the dust again. The parlor was done in that avocado puke green that was popular in the mid-Twentieth Century and despised ever since, with a sofa upholstered in a floral pattern that Don remembered his mom ripping out of their kitchen when they first moved into their house—now Charlie's house, never could get used to that thought—back in L.A. There was one curtain still standing, hanging from a tilted curtain rod, but the rest had long vanished and Don doubted that he'd ever arrest the rats and the field mice that had made off with the fabric. Two chairs and one sofa, now all sporting fresh new bullet holes, were scattered around the edges of the room. A bit of stuffing stuck out of those holes, stuffing that hadn't yet gone to line birds' nests and fox holes. A small table teetered on three legs instead of the four that it was supposed to have. The cigar in the ashtray still smoldered.

Six bodies. Each one of them had dripped blood onto the tattered carpet. Don supposed that he ought to take pictures, but the camera equipment that he was used to using was back in L.A. and he doubted that his cell phone would have the resolution necessary to do an adequate job. Don really wished that he was back in L.A. right now. This had been a disaster of a mission from the word 'go'.

One of the bodies looked familiar, and Don dropped to his knee to take a closer look. One quick inhalation of breath, and a frown: Schmidt. The man had been one of the first to go down, the bullet catching him straight through the heart. There was a lot of blood on him. Don felt sick. This was it: proof positive of the man's treason, and the death penalty had already been meted out. Nothing more to say.

He turned to leave. He'd need to notify the local branch of the FBI, he decided, as well as let Bakker know about his man. Let the locals take the pictures and turn the crime scene over. Don was tired. It was time to go back to Charlie and drag his brother home along with the rest of his beaten up team.

* * *

"David?" 

"Charlie?" David was on his feet in a flash, heading for the bed that contained the math consultant. "You okay, guy?"

Charlie winced, and David didn't want to imagine how the man felt. Those dead terrorists from underneath the bunker had done a number on his friend, pun not intended. Only one eye worked, one lip was easily the size of two, and barely peeping out from under the white covers was a bruise on Charlie's shoulder that David knew extended almost down to his waist. Charlie was going to be reminded of this episode in history every time he moved for the next several weeks.

Charlie took a deep breath, quickly regretting the action. "David, I need my laptop."

David had heard that before, and he had strict instructions from his boss. "Charlie, you need to rest."

"No, David." Exhausted, beaten to a pulp, but not yet finished. "David, they're going to _destroy_ my laptop. I need to download everything that I can before that happens. I _need_ to, David!"

"Charlie—"

"David, please!" Charlie was reduced to begging, and David was certain that there would have been tears in Charlie's eyes if it wouldn't have hurt to put them there. "David, I have _months _of Cognitive Emergence work in there! I can't lose that! I may never get it back. It will set me back months, if not years."

"Charlie, there are only three more empty discs," David tried to argue. "We still need more copies of the code—"

"David, please!" Charlie, frantic, worked at sitting up, trying not to let the groans emerge when injured parts of him protested the action. "Dav—"

_Whfft_.

The sound of the glass breaking arrived at David's ears just after his brain put together the fact that a bullet had entered the pillow on Charlie's bed.

Blood sprayed.

Charlie fell back onto the pillow.

More blood dribbled onto the white linens.

* * *

Thirteen people—seven rescuers and six rescuee's—wouldn't fit in two jeeps, so Col. Ryan called back to the resort for Lt. Col. Petersen to send back one of the vans that they had taken from the bunker. He assigned Sgt. Blane to take the van and loaded it with Ryan's own people, figuring that the hostages were still so frightened from the experience that having a few soldiers hovering nearby would be the best thing for their nerves, though he put his wife and the wife of Lt. Col. Petersen in the back seat of the jeep with Don and himself. 

Don could read between the lines: Ryan wanted to talk with him, and wanted to do so in relative private. With the top down, it was difficult for the two army wives to hear what they were saying. With the top down, it was difficult for Don himself to hear what was being said.

"Eppes, we got a problem," was Ryan's opening salvo.

Don tried not to groan. A crunched bunker, a crunched FBI team, a crunched consultant, and Ryan thought they had a 'problem'?

"Petersen got through to Washington." Ryan continued as if he hadn't read Don's thoughts. It was a courtesy; Don knew very well that Ryan had seen the expression on Don's face and had chosen to ignore it for the moment. "They want Ainsley to conduct the initial investigation."

Don blinked. "You mean Dr. Ainsley, the guy we just rescued?"

"The very one, Eppes."

Don tried to figure out how to word it politely. "Isn't it a little odd for one of the hostages to do the questioning of the personnel involved? Even for the Army?"

"Request didn't come from the Army, Eppes. It came from the NSA."

That took Don aback. "The NSA? The same alphabet soup agency that started this whole mess?"

"You heard me correctly, Special Agent Eppes. Now, why do you think that my superiors would willingly hand over an investigation involving my men and myself as well as another squad, not to mention our wives, to another branch of the government?"

"Who told you that it was being done willingly?" Don shot back.

"I see your thoughts are running alongside of mine." Ryan nodded approvingly. "According to what Petersen told me, the NSA has forwarded instructions for army psychologist Dr. Stephen Ainsley to conduct an investigation into this matter and forward a report to the NSA where it will be taken under advisement."

"And—?" Don knew an invitation for a straight line when he heard it.

"Dr. Ainsley is one of the sharpest men I know," Ryan admitted. "Can't stand the bastard. Gets his jollies out of making honest men squirm." He tossed a significant glance in Don's direction, managing to put a world of meaning into that swift look. "Can your brother keep his head with someone like that? I know he's a certified genius and all of that, but Ainsley's like a shark. He smells blood, and it'll be all over."

Don thought. Ryan was right. Charlie was brilliant with numbers, and he could talk anyone through whatever theory he thought was appropriate for the given situation. The man could talk your ear off, Don reminded himself wryly. Only this time, no one wanted Charlie to talk. No one, that is, except Dr. Stephen Ainsley who was currently riding in the second jeep beside Sgt. Williams. Charlie didn't have an ounce of guile in him. That was the best way Don knew to keep his brother in line while growing up; trick him into doing whatever it was that Don wanted. Worked every time.

It would work this time as well, only for the other side. If this Ainsley was half as clever as Ryan seemed to think, then they needed to keep him away from Charlie. He'd have the whole tale of the deciphered code out of him in under five minutes with the story of just _who_ that code implicated, and it would go downhill from there. Charlie would find his career in the same shredded condition as the puke green sofa at Hostage Central, and Don and his team could start looking for jobs as beat cops, if they were lucky.

Ryan put it into words. "I take it by your silence that you're thinking exactly what I am, Eppes. You got any suggestions?" He glanced at the digital clock wired in to the dash. "You got approximately fifteen minutes to come up with something."


	20. Cold 20 Numb3rs

A quick yell brought a couple of Bakker's men running, Private Mason in the lead.

"Sniper!" David snarled, already dragging the inert body in front of him down to the floor from the bed. Breathing? Charlie had better be. The blood gushing from his forehead didn't look good. The blank stare looked even worse.

Despite being a lowly private, Mason took charge. "Henderson, you and Donalson go after 'im. Get that guy!" Mason bellied up to the window, ignoring the shards of glass and the cold air, and poked his nose out. "Move it, youse guys! He's gettin' away!" He wrenched himself around to give intel to David. "Sinclair! It looks like that Foster guy, from the NSA!"

David refused to voice the expletive that wanted to burst forth. He had more important things to worry about, things that were far more curse-worthy. "Charlie! Charlie, wake up!" _Man, if you're dead, Don will— _

Groan.

"Charlie!" _Your life may not have flashed before your eyes, but mine sure did_. "Charlie, lie still. Don't try to move."

Another groan. "David?"

David didn't budge. The gun felt good and solid in his hand. "Stay still, Charlie. Mason, what's happening?"

"He's still running, sir." Anyone in charge rated a sir; simple habit not worth breaking under the circumstances. Mason edged his head up a little higher for a better view.

"You see anyone else out there?"

"No, sir."

"Good." Reprieve. It could be temporary, but David was willing to take what he could get. "Give me a hand. We're getting Charlie out of here. Grab his feet." _And once I get him safely settled in a room without windows, I have a very scary phone call to make to my team leader_.

* * *

Don didn't wait for the jeep to come to a complete halt before jumping out of the vehicle. He dashed into the ruined lobby of the resort, feeling the crunch of the broken glass beneath his feet and not caring one whit. He had more important things to care about and, at the moment, national security actually came in second.

David met him at the door. "He's okay, Don."

"Where is he?"

"He's okay," David repeated. "I've got him in a back room, no windows. Some of Bakker's men are--"

"Where is he? Now." Don tried to keep himself under control. It wasn't easy.

"In here." David led the way, allowing himself to be shouldered back when Don pushed through.

Charlie's eyes were closed, but one of them slowly hoisted itself upward at the sound of Don entering.

"Charlie?" Don slid to a stop, appalled at how bad his brother looked. Charlie had, in the short time that Don was gone, acquired a new white bandage wrapped around his head, complete with a Rorschach spot of blood seeping through the mar the pristine whiteness. Don himself began to tremble; with relief, he told himself. He was shaking with relief.

Dr. Ainsley barged in behind Don. "Dr. Eppes! I have some questions for you!"

What? Don couldn't believe the gall of the man. Couldn't he see--?

Apparently not. "David," Don forced out between gritted teeth, "get him out of here." _Before I kill him_, he left unsaid.

* * *

Ainsley had taken over one of the conference rooms for his investigation and was holding court. He had his laptop set up beside him, a pad of paper on which to take hand-written notes, and two of Petersen's men stationed outside the conference room to run errands. Dr. Ainsley's fingers were already tapping a non-melodic symphony onto the laptop keyboard, the fingertips stained dark. A faint wisp of tobacco smoke hovered in the air.

Charlie could feel his brother smoldering as Don escorted him into Dr. Ainsley's inner sanctum. There had already been a battle lost; Don had tried to get Charlie excused on the basis of his injuries. Don had had a point, Charlie had to concede. 'Sore' didn't begin to cover the way he was feeling, and he suspected that the amount of skin not purpled with bruises was in the neighborhood of less than ten percent. The pain in his head that started where the bullet had creased him expanded to include all possible brain cells and from there eased itself into his eyes to make the scene in front of him waver and shiver with little black rivulets around the edges. But he was still walking, however slowly, and Dr. Ainsley's take on it had been, "if you can walk, you can talk."

Charlie could understand Don's dismay. If the stern colonel in the background was correct—and there was no reason to suspect otherwise—then this would not be an easy interview. This was someone who was as good at interrogations as Don himself. That in itself was enough to make Charlie nervous. He'd never been able to hold anything back from Don. The closest he'd ever come to success was that time back in high school when Don was pumping him about that week's cheerleader he was interested in, and Charlie had managed to cover up by distracting Don with a fast sidetrack into differential equations with the high school calculus teacher who looked like Julianne Moore. There wasn't a boy in that high school who didn't have a crush on the teacher, Don was no exception, and Charlie had taken advantage of that fact along with a healthy helping of calc. Of course, Don realized the ploy the next day and pounded the answer out of Charlie right after school, but Charlie had already decided that he would use the same ploy of distraction on this Dr. Ainsley. If Charlie could get through this interview and away, then the NSA would have a tough time tracking him down for another intimate interview. Dr. Charles Eppes would be back at CalSci and already delving into his regular job, too ivory-towered to think about anything else as mundane as national security. 'Of course the details would fade' once Dr. Eppes was on a different job. Anything he said at that point would be open to further clarification, because he wouldn't remember exactly what had happened.

As he hobbled toward the conference room where Dr. Ainsley sat waiting, Charlie envied Colby and Lt. Bakker—sort of. Both men, one with a bullet through his shoulder and the other with a crunched leg, had recently been carted away to the nearest medical facility. Dr. Ainsley had been given a bare five minutes with each. Lt. Bakker, Don had told him, had even managed to pass out during the interview for dramatic effect. Lack of blood, Don had said to Charlie, and had gone on to try to tell Ainsley that Charlie too wasn't available due to his injuries. It hadn't worked. Dr. Ainsley had pointed out that Charlie hadn't gone with Colby and Bakker, and therefore, in Ainsley's opinion, his injuries were less severe and wouldn't preclude him from interrogation. Ainsley had then gone on to ride over Don's explanation of possible snipers en route to the hospital, and gave Don a bare fifteen minutes to prepare his brother for the worst.

Don tried. At first, Charlie hadn't been concerned. After all, it was only keeping one piece of information secret: that Charlie had indeed deciphered the code. That hadn't mollified Don, who had proceeded to show Charlie all the ways that little tidbits could leak out and cause them all to go down in flames.

Charlie tried to keep the overriding directive from Don in the front of his brain: _when in doubt, plead ignorance, Chuck. You've been in an explosion, you got bopped on the head with a bullet, and you got beat up by terrorists. Take advantage of your black eye; claim you don't remember much_. It sounded like good advice under the circumstances. _And, if all else fails, plead exhaustion, concussion; whatever. I'll get you out of there somehow._

So here he was, Don's hand under Charlie's elbow for support, both emotional and physical. The limp, Charlie reflected, wasn't just for show, and neither was the wince that he couldn't quite suppress as he lowered himself gingerly into the chair at Ainsley's table. _I wish that this place had upholstered chairs in the conference rooms_, Charlie decided grimly. _Any place as expensive as this ought to. Note to self: never come here for a conference._

"Dr. Charles Eppes." For Ainsley, it served as both a greeting and an identification. There was no warmth in his tone, only eagerness.

_Eagerness for what?_ Charlie wondered. The psychologist seemed entirely too composed for a man who had just been rescued from a bunch of terrorists.

On the other hand, he reminded himself, he was Charles Eppes, who had faced a thesis panel composed of some of the world's top minds to defend his Ph.D. dissertation, only half of whom wanted him to succeed. The other half wanted to keep him sequestered until he was 'old enough' not to make others look bad to themselves for not achieving the same early milestones. He'd conquered them then. This Dr. Ainsley shouldn't prove to be any more difficult, no matter what Col. Ryan feared.

"Dr. Ainsley." He declined to offer his hand for shaking, and went on the immediate offensive. "I hope we can keep this brief."

Flash like a knife. "Is there something that you don't want to discuss, Dr. Eppes, that you are trying to escape?"

Prof. Eppes gave him a cold-eyed stare that he'd perfected on obstreperous sophomores. "What I want, Dr. Ainsley, is to be seen by a qualified health care professional who can prescribe appropriate narcotics for pain relief. You insisted on this meeting. Can we get on with it?"

Point: Eppes. Charlie could feel Don cheering silently behind his chair. Colonel Ryan, positioned in back of Dr. Ainsley, gave a crooked smile. It would have felt better if Charlie thought that both men believed that he could pull this off.

Dr. Ainsley inclined his head and turned his attention to the screen overlooking the keyboard. He scanned the data found there. Marshalling his thoughts, Charlie decided, and deciding how to proceed. Stalling, and watching Charlie for signs of weakness. _Got plenty of those_, Charlie thought.

"Tell me, Dr. Eppes, how you came to be involved in this fiasco."

"You know very well how. I was requested by the NSA for a consultation. Just like you," Charlie slipped in.

"How do you know that the NSA requested me to—"

"Because we wouldn't be sitting here now if they hadn't," Charlie interrupted. "This is an NSA project, not military; therefore, the NSA requested your intervention. Get on with this, Dr. Ainsley. You may have time to waste, but I do not. I have other projects waiting for me."

"More important than national security, Dr. Eppes?" Nastily.

"This is not national security, and you know it," Charlie told him. "This is the clean up squad with an attempt to learn what needs to be swept under the proverbial table before the media gets hold it. I wasn't able to decipher the code, and no one in the NSA or any other government agency will gain any benefit from it. That's the end of my part of it. If you need to write up a report of anything more, you can go to the bunker that was blown up and see for yourself how those men got onto the base. _That _will impact national security, not this code's inability to be broken. I have nothing more to add, so don't go waving national security at me. I'm a consultant, not an NSA field agent."

"You sound rather irritable, Dr. Eppes—"

"I have been blown up, shot at, beaten, and I do not feel well in the slightest. Don't expect me to be patient under the circumstances, Dr. Ainsley." It was only the truth.

Ainsley changed direction abruptly. "Tell me about the code."

Charlie blinked. "What about it?"

"Were you able to decode any of it?"

"No. I already told you that."

"No?"

"No." Charlie leaned back in his chair, thought better of it when one of his ribs sagged against the hard backing of the seat with a sharp stab of his muscles. It really did hurt, and he wondered if it would make him pass out, like Lt. Bakker. With his luck, probably not. Don had suggested bowing out with injuries, but Charlie didn't want to do that. That would only delay the inevitable, and Charlie wanted to get this interview over and done with. He stopped talking to concentrate on taking his next breath, hoping that the knife edge between his ribs would slip away.

"Not even a small bit of it?"

"No." Charlie swallowed hard. It helped; the fiery blast in his chest that prevented him from moving decreased by one tenth of one percent. He tried to concentrate on what the psychologist was saying, wishing that his vision would clear.

"That seems odd."

"Codes don't work that way, not at this level of complexity." Charlie took refuge in a lecture. He could do that without thinking, and right now the inferno in his side was taking the bulk of his attention. "Once you have a bit of it, you have a handle on the rest. You crank it out, and it falls in place." _Ow. Ow, ow. Small breath, because a larger one would move those ribs and send parts of me spiraling into a very unhappy place._ "That didn't happen here." _Okay, gotta chance a bigger breath, because every cell in my body is screaming for oxygen._

_Crap._

"Dr. Eppes?" The sound of his name swirled in his ears, and he couldn't seem to respond. It was very important that he do so—Don was counting on him—but most of him simply refused his brain's demands.

"Chuck?" Yeah, that was Don. He could feel his brother's strong hands on his shoulders, taking hold and pushing his head down. "Chuck, you okay?"

_No, not really, Don. You remember that time when you got beaned by a ball by that pitcher in Little League? The one who was determined that your team wouldn't make the play-offs, and knew that taking you out was the only way to prevent it? You were a pretty good baseball player even back then and everyone was betting that you were going put a homer out of the park. His dad put him up to it, and the league kicked them both out after that. Point is: you had a concussion, and you stayed home from school for a week with Mom, puking your guts out every time you moved your head._

_That's how I feel._

_Watch out._

"Chuck!" Charlie felt limp in his arms, and Don was more than a little alarmed. "Chuck, you okay?"

" 'm okay," Charlie mumbled. "Just need…to catch…"

"Charlie!" Don eased his brother's head to the table, careful not to let it bump on the hard surface, scared. They'd talked about Charlie bowing out in the middle due to his injuries, but no one could fake the white pallor or the beads of sweat standing out on his brother's forehead. This looked like it was for real.

Col. Ryan too came forward, feeling for the pulse at Charlie's neck. "Looks like he passed out, Ainsley. This interview ain't going nowhere."

"He'll come around," Dr. Ainsley predicted. "We can continue."

Don was appalled. "Are you kidding? This is not an enemy interrogation, Ainsley! I'm getting him to a doctor, and that's final!" Decision made, snipers be damned.

"This is national security, Special Agent Eppes, and _I_ am in charge!" Ainsley snarled back. "_I_ will tell you when man leaves!" He reached to check Charlie's pulse himself, darkened fingertips aiming for the wrist. "He's fine! Get him some water, and he'll be fine."

Don stared at those fingertips. The answer was there, it was screaming at him, and he couldn't put it together. Something was trying to tell him something. What was wrong with this picture?

"This man has valuable information, whether he realizes it or not!" Ainsley insisted, "information that is needed by our country immediately! You!" The psychologist whirled around to stab a tobacco-stained finger at Ryan, "go fetch a physician to come here. There is no time to waste! Go! We must have this intelligence."

It clicked. It clicked in Don's head, and it stank to high heaven.

It reeked of tobacco.

Don caught up Ainsley's hand from Charlie's wrist. He turned it over. "Your fingers are stained."

Ainsley snatched his hand away. "What are you babbling about, Eppes?" He turned on Ryan. "You! Go do as I say! Get this man some water!"

Don wouldn't let him change the subject. "Your fingers are stained with tobacco."

"What of it? Why are you trying to distract me, Agent Eppes?"

"Because," and Don straightened from bending over his brother, "there was a cigar at the old mansion where we rescued you, Dr. Ainsley. It was still lit."

"So? One of the terrorists smoked cigars." Ainsley grabbed Charlie by the shoulder. "Wake up! Wake up, Dr. Eppes!"

Ryan too smelled blood. He moved in like a shark, pulling Ainsley away from where he was trying to shake the math consultant into coherency. "Middle of the night? Right after bombing a bunker filled with soldiers and FBI agents? Carrying a boatload of hostages that were kidnapped from a bunch of American soldiers? Can't see any of 'em being calm enough to enjoy a cigar, let alone carrying it to an invasion. Where'd they get it from, Ainsley?"

Dr. Ainsley struggled to regain control of the situation. "I am in charge! The NSA has given me the authority over this—"

"No," Don said with conviction, "no, you're not in charge. _I _am. This mission was assigned to the FBI by the NSA. This was not a joint operation, this was an FBI assignment. You're out of line, Ainsley." He turned to Col. Ryan. "Colonel, I'd like to deputize a couple of your men."

"My pleasure, Special Agent Eppes. What for?"

"First, to provide an escort for my consultant to get some medical care."

"And—" Ryan clearly was enjoying what was coming next.

"Next," and Don stared straight at Ainsley, "I need to place a guard on Dr. Ainsley's room. I have unanswered questions as to the role of some of the hostages—"

"You can't do this—"

"—and since I am in charge of this operation, it is my duty to national security," he threw the phrase in Ainsley's face, "it is my duty as a Federal agent to investigate any possible connections that might have a bearing on national security."

"You'll need a warrant—"

The smile that crossed Don's face had no humor in it. "Col. Ryan, Lt. Bakker was a betting man, and I suspect that you are, as well. How much will you bet that I can't get a warrant within two hours, starting now?"

"Not gonna take that bet, Eppes. My mama didn't raise a fool for a son."

"Until then, I am declaring your room a crime scene," Don told Ainsley.

"You can't do that—"

"I can." Don dared Ainsley to argue with him. "A man was kidnapped from your room: you. Everyone else the terrorists took had value to them: each one was the wife of a soldier. Not you, sir. What made _you_ a valuable target?"

"You'll hear from my superiors!" Ainsley raged, shaking his finger at Don like an impotent weapon. "You'll hear from my superiors!"

"No, he won't." Charlie picked his head up from the table, looking as though he wished that amputation was an option.

"You!"

"If the NSA sent you, then your superiors are my superiors," Charlie said tiredly. "You also know that my security clearance is a lot higher than yours. Go and talk to your 'superiors'. Let me know what you find out."

Ainsley backed toward the door. "Don't try to stop me! I'm calling your commanding officer, Ryan! You're facing a court martial!"

"Nobody's stopping you from leaving," Don pointed out. "There's the door, right behind you. Just don't try to go to your room."

"Good advice, Ainsley," Ryan added. "My men will be standing guard." He watched Dr. Ainsley flee from the room, trying not to chuckle. He turned to Don. "How'd you figure that out, Eppes? He ran like a scared jackrabbit." The grin fled. "I sure hope that there isn't a court martial in my future."

"There won't be," Don promised grimly. "Charlie?"

"I don't know who sent him," Charlie said, "but it wasn't the top people at the NSA. I know them; I've done a lot of work for them over the years. If they really needed to debrief me, they'd send someone that I knew personally. They know that I wouldn't be talking to anyone that I didn't know for certain was from the NSA. Or the FBI," he added, turning to his brother.

"It was the cigar," Don said. "I meant what I said. Somebody in the mansion was sitting calmly, smoking a stogie. That meant that the cigar-smoker knew he was in no danger. Ainsley's fingers were stained with tobacco. It could have been one of the terrorists, but these were people who had just carried out a bombing of a military base, invaded a resort filled with soldiers, kidnapped army wives including those of the ranking officers present." Don paused for breath. "These are religious extremists. These people are not likely to smoke, not when modern interpretations of the Koran discourage it." He shook his head. "No, it was Ainsley who was smoking that cigar, and I'll be able to prove it by finding more in his hotel room. Proof positive will come when the local FBI office turns over the crime scene; I'll make sure to have them dust the cigar for prints in the mansion."

"Good eyes," Ryan approved. "You know your business, Eppes." He moved on. "So where do we go from here? Ainsley'll run to his people—"

"—who'll do nothing." Of that, Don was certain. "As long as we don't make a fuss, neither will they. They'll just watch. And sweat. And hopefully sweat some more."

Ryan sighed, nodded, accepting the necessity. "Would've liked to bring some of them down. Don't like the way the country is headed. Doesn't set right."

"Yeah, well, neither do I," Don agreed. "But I can't see a better way out of this mess. Can you?"

Charlie was just as grim as the other two. "I know who I'll be voting for in the next election. It can't come soon enough. Maybe once they're out of office, action can be taken."

Ryan shook his head dolefully. "Been watching this a long time, son," he told the mathematician. "Don't count on it."

"Colonel, counting is what I do for a living."


	21. Cold 21 Numb3rs

Their speed was slow, allowing Charlie to limp across the airport tarmac at his own pace to the waiting private jet that Don had hired for the flight home. Don had tried to get another wheelchair, the same as he'd obtained for Colby, but his brother had steadfastly refused.

"I walked in here," Charlie informed him, blinking rapidly to keep his one eye open, "and I'm going to walk out." He held up a brown plastic bottle with a white label, hand trembling. "Besides, with these babies, I can probably fly back to L.A. all by myself, no airfoils needed. Wheee!" He listed to one side.

Don moved in to shore him up, hiding a grin. His brother had staggered into this mission, and he was staggering out. _Showed a certain amount of karmic balance in the world_. "C'mon, Chuck. Let's get you into the nice jet before you fall flat on your nose and break it."

"Won't be able to tell," Charlie giggled. "Got too many bruises right now." _Hic_. "You said so."

"Yeah, I did." It was going to be a long flight home, Don mused wryly. Charlie high on pain-killers promised cheap entertainment that they all could do without. Charlie always babbled, only this time they wouldn't be able to tell if he was making sense or not.

"C'mon, Charlie. See if you can keep up with me," Colby said from his wheelchair, David behind doing the pushing. He glanced at Don. "Hate to be paranoid, Don, but are you sure about this? Wouldn't be the first time that a small jet has gone down in these mountains."

"Let's just say that I got a recommendation for the pilot from some friends," Don told him. "The guy's private, and likes it that way. We can trust him. We'll get home safe."

"And then?" David looked at the future and didn't like what he saw. "We all have to write up reports on this mission, boss."

"Write away," Don invited. "Just make sure to put in that Charlie wasn't able to decipher the code."

"I did, you know," Charlie confided drunkenly. "Cracked it wider than a toothpick."

"Don't you mean barn door, Charlie?"

"Yup," Charlie agreed, hiccupping. "Wider than a darn bore. Barn bore. Darn door. Whatever." He staggered, his legs giving out underneath him.

Don caught him easily. "Plane, Charlie. Sit down."

"Glad to." Charlie clutched at the door frame to the jet that Don had hired, missed, and grabbed Don instead.

That was okay with Don.

* * *

Area Director D'Angelo studied the hard copy of the report that Don turned in. He flipped the first page over and moved on to the next, keeping Special Agent Eppes waiting in the chair in front of him. "I find myself singularly unimpressed with the results of this assignment, Eppes." 

"Yes, sir," Don agreed, keeping his posture relaxed. "I'm sure that the NSA was disappointed, as well. It's not often that Charlie doesn't come through." He guided the discussion to where he wanted it. "However, sir, if you look at the overall picture, you can see that the FBI did what was asked of it. We provided security for the NSA consultant, and did it successfully under extraordinary circumstances. In addition, we apprehended a large terrorist cell in the area."

"None of them lived to tell the tale, Eppes," D'Angelo observed dryly.

"Yes, well, there wasn't much option over that." Don scuttled around that point. "We were significantly out-numbered. The NSA should also be grateful that we identified their mole."

"Yes, whatever did happen to Agent Foster? Any hints that didn't make it into your report, Don?"

First name basis, so this part wasn't going into D'Angelo's own report. Don allowed his voice to have honest regret. "No, sir. Wish I did." _Because I'd really like to hunt him down for what he tried to do to my brother and my team._ "Best guess is that he ran for it. I put his name out for Immigration to watch for but as good as he is, I don't expect them to catch him crossing the border." He sighed for dramatic effect, keeping it subtle because D'Angelo didn't need anything more for Don to make his point. "He's the NSA's problem now, and good riddance."

D'Angelo grimaced by way of agreement. "I see that the NSA withdrew their request for that army psychologist to provide them with an independent report of the matter."

"Yes, sir. The unofficial story that came down to me was that someone at the top levels realized that Dr. Ainsley didn't have high enough clearance to interview Dr. Eppes on a matter of this importance. I understand that Dr. Ainsley has been reassigned back to Washington." _And has disappeared_, Don carefully didn't add.

"I see." D'Angelo paused. He glanced at the report in his hands, then back at Don. "You're certain that Charlie didn't crack this code? Didn't come up with any names?" A significant pause. "No one I should know about?"

Don looked his superior straight in the eye. The guileless gaze came straight from years at the poker table, learning it from the best: his father.

"No, sir," he lied.

* * *

Dr. Larry Fleinhardt entered Dr. Eppes' office, a package under his arm. "Don, a pleasure to see you, as always. Charles, you're looking better. Your bruises can now be mistaken for a five o'clock shadow rather than the pugilistic pummeling that they were." He peered more closely. "No, I believe some of that truly is a five o'clock shadow. Are you neglecting routine hygiene in favor of working on Cognitive Emergence Theory? I warn you, inadequate hygiene is inconsistent with the concept of cognition." 

"Hey, Larry." Don waved a hand in the air, one with a slice of pizza in it, and finished by aiming it for his mouth for another bite. He leaned back in his chair.

"I'll start shaving again when I've finished healing," Charlie informed his colleague glumly. He motioned to the pizza sitting on his desk, mushrooms on one half and pepperoni on the other. "Join us for lunch?" He eyed the package that Larry was toting with concern. "What's that you're carrying? I'll warn you, I'm behind on a lot of things. Losing my laptop has set me back for several months. If it's a new project, I may not be able to get to it for a while. I've even told Don not to bug me for the next two weeks."

"He's serious, this time," Don groused. "Do you have any idea how much work has piled up, just over that one weekend?"

Larry perused the package that he had brought in with him. "No, Charles, much as I would like to enlist your assistance, I am well aware of your status. The loss of your laptop was devastating, and will likely take you far too long to return to your previous level of research. It is fortunate that you had the majority of the information backed up on discs, or it might have been years." He handed the package to Charlie. "Actually, a young man brought this to me, asked if I would be so kind as to deliver it to you with his compliments. When I asked for his name, I found that he had vanished into the rushing flow of humanity outside my office." He looked at it again. "Do you have any idea of what it might be?"

"Not a clue." Charlie set it down on top of his paper-strewn desk, heedless of the mess underneath the package. He aimed for the twine.

"Hey, wait a minute." The FBI in Don got rattled. "Charlie, let's hold on. Who's this from? Remember where you've been, guy." He pulled the package closer to him and away from his brother, listening for the tell tale sound of ticking. Nothing.

"Don--"

"Hang on, buddy." Don looked it over, and failed to be reassured. There was no return address, only Charlie's name and title scrawled across the front. He hefted the package, trying to estimate the weight, wondering how much a pound of C-4 weighed just before it exploded. _Stupid question, Eppes. A pound of C-4 weighs: a pound!_ He considered; this package weighed considerably more than a pound.

Then it hit him. Don had a fairly good idea of what was inside, and who it had come from. He smiled. "Go ahead, Chuck."

"Don?"

"Go ahead," Don repeated, broadening his smile. "It's okay."

"Okay," Charlie echoed, puzzled but reassured. If Don said it was okay, then it would be. If it wasn't, then Don--sitting next to him--would share in the consequences. Charlie pulled out a pair of scissors and snipped at the twine that kept the package intact. "Let's see." He unwrapped the brown paper, saving the address. It bore only his name, a formal Dr. Charles Eppes, CalSci, written in a neat and unremarkable hand. There was no return address, and no suggestion that it had gone through the postal service or had any intention of doing so. Charlie pulled the paper away.

It was a laptop. It was a laptop with a number of scratches on the outside cover. Don sat back, a satisfied expression on his face.

"Charles?" Larry clearly admitted to puzzlement. "Charles, that appears to be your laptop. I thought you told me that it had been destroyed in the cave in."

Charlie stroked the small box along the edge. "Two things, Larry."

"Which are?"

"One: whatever anyone says, this is not my laptop. My laptop was crushed beyond repair during my last consulting job for the NSA, and I will tell that to anyone and everyone who asks."

"I see. And second?"

Charlie grinned broadly. "I believe that I will now have time to help you with your latest project, Dr. Fleinhardt. I suddenly find myself all caught up." He flipped the lid open, hitting the power button. The insides whirred in relief at release from enforced inactivity, and the various programs reached out and connected with the wireless internet weaving invisibly through the atmosphere. Several files automatically updated themselves.

Charlie frowned. "Maybe not. Look at all this mail. The ratio of spam to legitimate messages is _hello_!" he broke off.

"Charlie?" Don leaned forward.

"This isn't mail," Charlie told him. "This is a powerpoint, and someone told it to start when I turned the laptop on. Hang on a sec; let's see what pops up."

It didn't take long. The first screen arrived, cold and unadorned. The words popped onto the screen:

_Professor Eppes, kindly request your brother to join you prior to advancing any further. TPR_

"TPR?" Larry asked. "Who might that be?"

Neither Eppes answered him.

"I'm already here, Chuck," Don said. "Next slide?"

Next slide: _Special Agent Eppes, given the graphic content of the following slides, you may wish to encourage your brother to exit the immediate vicinity. Likewise, it is recommended that no one other than yourself view this information_.

That didn't sound good. "Charlie?"

"I'll stay," Charlie said grimly. The shadow covering his eye seemed to darken slightly. Don had his doubts, but Charlie had earned the right to make his own decisions. He knew the risks. He had almost gotten killed by those risks.

Larry, on the other hand, was another story. The physicist held up his hands. "There are times, Don, when the mysteries of the Universe pale in comparison to the mysteries of man. I suspect that this is one of those instances, and so, in order to avoid excessive concern and confusion, I shall absent myself at this time. Charles, I shall take you up on your offer to assist in my next article, and shall rejoin you later today, after class."

"Office hours finish at four." Charlie's attention was on the computer screen, watching it for signs of an impending explosion.

"Later, Larry." Don turned back to the laptop after Larry had shut the door behind him. "Go for it, buddy."

Next slide. This one had a smaller font size, the better to fit more information onto the screen.

_The home of a mutal acquaintance was broken into recently. Unfortunately, the intruder was discovered by the man's wife who demonstrated her proficiency with a handgun. Just thought you'd like to know._

Charlie exchanged a worried glance with his brother. "One more slide," he murmured.

There were no words on the last slide, only a slightly grainy picture, as though taken with a cell phone camera with an inadequate focus. It didn't need to be better; both Eppes recognized the features of the man in the photo, the dark hair and the neatly trimmed hair. The eyes were closed, and the bullet hole straight through the forehead broke up the monotony.

It was Steven Foster, the erstwhile NSA agent. Traitor to his country. No longer a problem for anyone except the coroner's office.

Charlie closed his eyes, and swallowed hard. The pizza on his desk suddenly seemed incredibly unappetizing.

Don closed down the screen. He pulled up the menu, selected the file, and tapped 'delete'. Then he took hold of Charlie's good shoulder, giving him a reassuring squeeze.

"It's okay, Charlie," he told his brother. "The case is now closed."

* * *

Final A/N: Some of you will be disappointed that I didn't 'name names' of those 'upper level people' directing the twisting of the operations for and against our boys and that they 'didn't get what they deserved'. That was deliberate; I and others are growing more and more concerned that various world leaders may be using their power, either intentionally or accidentally, for personal gain rather than the welfare of our planet (can you spell 'paranoia'?). Educate yourselves on current events and select whichever names seem to you to best fit the criteria for this piece of fiction. For those of us eligible to vote, it is more important than ever that we not be swayed by rhetoric but instead carefully consider which candidate is best suited to make this world a better place for all, and then vote our conscience. 


End file.
